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Critical Reading and Academic Writing (Expository Writing III) (GE-211): Course Outline (GE-211)

It focuses on developing skills in reading comprehension, argument analysis, and evidence-based writing. Through structured exercises and academic discourse, students learn to construct well-organized, logical, and persuasive essays, preparing them for ad

Course description

This is an advanced-level course. The main objective of the course is to enable the students to improve students’ writing skills at advanced level to show proficiency in any kind of academic and professional setting. The course will improve students’ expository writing skills such as composing different types of essays, and long reports and maintaining cohesion and coherence in their writing. Similarly, the course will also focus on the use of various formats for academic writing such as APA. The students will also be trained in identifying, comprehending, writing, and proofing different writing genres used in academic and professional settings. Moreover, they will also be equipped to change opinions to facts, using hedges, suitable vocabulary, etc.  

Course objectives

The objectives of this course are to:

  • Enable the students to overcome common language errors in writing.
  • Help students write formally.
  • Train students to change opinions into facts.
  • Help them to cite experts using different formats.
  • Make students aware of various types of academic and professional writing.
  • Expose students to different types of writing formats.
  • Help students understand the basic ethics of academic and professional writing. 

Course contents

Unit -I: Information Literacy: Reading and Writing in Academy 

    • Understating the concept of ‘Think Tank’
    • Understanding the IMRaD structure of a research report
    • Library catalogue and digital resources
    • Techniques for skimming and scanning to academic sources
    • Prewrite
    • Evaluation of the quality of academic source
    • Pre-writing activities

Unit -II: Persuasive Essays, Argumentation, and Engaging Sources

    • Evaluation of the strength of written arguments
    • Demonstration of the skills to compile an annotated bibliography
    • Understanding the purpose of the literature review
    • Analysing citations
    • Building an argument and constructing a claim
    • Summarizing texts

Unit -III: Critical Reading and Writing: Literature Reviews and Narrative Structure

  • Word stress in English
  • Think tank presentation— extemporaneous speech
  • What is a literature review?
  • Digital reference management tools
  • Write the first draft of a literature review
  • Peer review of literature review
  • Data collection planning
  • Methods section preview

Unit -IV: Report Writing

  • Understanding a results section
  • Writing a results section
  • Writing a discussion section
  • Drafting a research report

Unit -V: Writing Introductions, Conclusions, and Abstracts

  • Note taking-introductions
  • Think tank writing peer review of introductions
  • Revise your introduction
  • Note taking-conclusions
  • Reading of sample conclusions
  • Peer review of conclusions
  • Revision of conclusion
  • Oral presentations and feedback
  • Individual reverse outlining
  • Note taking abstracts
  • Reading of sample abstract
  • Peer review of abstract
  • Revision of abstract
  • Annotated bibliography check-in

       Unit-VI: Proofreading

  • Proofreading sample passages
  • Justifying the changes made
  • Proofreading workshop

Textbooks

Suggested Readings

Assessment and Examinations

Assessment will be done as per university/department policy.

Teaching-learning Strategies

Teaching will be done through the lecture method with a combination of tasks/projects and presentations