英文作文(二) A組

To train students to write paragraphs and short essays in English

Instructor: Kien Ket Lim Only students who major in Foreign Languages can sign up.

General Information 1. Course purpose. The course seeks to coach students’ writing skills in English on the freshman level. Major emphases will be placed upon writing the essays that involve comparison and contrast, classification, process analysis, cause-and-effect analysis, and argumentation. 2. Class attendance is mandatory. If you happen to be absent from class, you must report to the instructor for the make-up assignment, if any, and get an official leave of absence from the University Administration (https://portal.nycu.edu.tw/portal/ stuoffcourse). 3. Class protocol: a. Always get enough sleep the evening before the class. b. No food or beverage, except drinking water, is allowed in the classroom. 4. Electronic gadgets: a. Switch off your cell phone, or switch it to the flight mode. b. No texting or checking online information through an electronic device (such as a cell phone) within the classroom, except during the breaks. c. No recording, audio or visual, or podcasting is allowed in class. d. Unless noted otherwise, online electronic resources are discouraged from use for in-class writing. 5. Office hours: a) Always make an appointment, most preferably through e-mail, for the office hours. b) Do not knock on the instructor’s office door, unless an appointment has been made in advance. 6. E-mail policy: a) Announcements related to this class will be made through e-mails. Make sure that your e-mail account at E3 and the NYCU Online Course Registration System (https://course.nycu.edu.tw/) is current, and check your e-mails regularly. b) Always identify yourself by noting your student’s ID and your name in Chinese when you write. Feel free to write in English or Chinese, although the instructor will always write to you in English. c) Follow the rules of writing your e-mail as you would in the business setting. 7. Rights. The instructor reserves the final and exclusive rights to amend any portion of the course syllabus, including the grading scale, course schedule, regulations, and instructions on assignments and examinations. Class Participation 1. Students are expected to join the class discussions and will be given a credit each time they speak up. They must learn, among other things, to make summaries and form opinions on the assigned readings. 2. English is the language used in all discussions. Blogs and Essays 1. Honesty matters. a) In all cases, plagiarism will not be tolerated. Credits must be given to the authors or sources you cite, if any. b) Assistance by AGI (artificial general intelligence), such as ChatGPT, is strongly discouraged, so to ensure that your works are original. 2. Weekly blogs: a) Length: Except for the weeks marked with an asterisk (*) in the Course Schedule below, you write a blog of 5 to 25 sentences in English as your response to the chapters assigned to read weekly in The House on Mango Street. b) Submission: To submit your blog, click on the “Forum” (討論區) button in the panel on the left of our page at E3. Go to the section “Weekly Blogs” for the week you should do your posting, and click on the “Reply” (回應) button to start. For your blog’s title, fill in the subject slot (主題) with your student’s ID, to be followed by a topic of your choice, such as: 112450088 The Fear of Being Homeless c) What to Write: You can always turn in a new blog or write a response to the blogs written by your classmates. Either way, you write as pertinently as you can in your response to the weekly assigned chapters. You may write a comment, a remark, a criticism, or even a letter to the narrator, but never a description, a summary, or a free association. All internet protocols apply, such as to refrain from trashing the characters in the book, writing offensive remarks, making a personal attack, or using the expletives, etc. d) Sentence count: At the end of your blog, specify the number of sentences you have written, such as (18) to mean 18 sentences. e) Deadline: The blog deadline is 11: 59 p.m. each Sunday evening. Submit your blog as early as you can. There is a grace period extended to 12:00 p.m. on the upcoming Wednesday, crossing which the grade shall be substantially lowered. f) Grading: Your blog will be graded with the scale of 1 to 5. Expect your grade to fall between 4.0 and 4.9 on average. Length matters, however: a blog less than 5 sentences or more than 25 sentences will be graded less than 4.0. If no blog is turned in, the grade is 0. A late blog will be graded as 3.5 as the highest. 3. Writing assignments: a) You write your essays in class in the booklets given to you. b) Dictionary matters: You are strongly discouraged from using an electronic dictionary when you do your writing in class, unless advised otherwise. A print dictionary is always preferred. Students who should violate this rule will not be allowed to take the midterm or the final examination (q.v. “Examinations”). c) Mechanics: Each of your essays should be handwritten clearly in double spacing. Leave ample room in the margins. Pay special attention to your spelling and punctuation. d) Time matters: Given that time is compressing each time you write your assignment in class, you must do your best to beat the 12:00 p.m. deadline. e) Essay information: On the cover of your essay booklet, you must mark the week number (Week 1, Week 2, etc.). Mark also the word count at the end of your essay. f) Grading: see the section “Grading Scale” in this syllabus. g) Upload: When your writing assignment has been edited and returned to you, you must type and upload it to our E3 site. Go to the forum “Writing Assignments” and look up for the exact topic (Essay Assignment 1, 2, or 3), where you post your edited piece using your student’s ID and your essay title as your subject (主題), for example: 112450088 My Last Summer Vacation. h) Deadline: The essay upload deadline is 11: 59 p.m. on the nearest Sunday evening. Please do your upload as early as you can. There is a grace period extended to 12:00 p.m. on the upcoming Wednesday, crossing which a penalty shall be imposed. i) Penalty: Uploads that are posted after the designated deadlines and grace periods shall each receive a 20% deduction of the assignment grade. For example, if you receive 12.0 as your essay grade, but are late in uploading it to E3, an amount of 2.4 will be deducted from your essay grade to become 9.6, etc. Examinations 1. The midterm and final examinations contains three parts each, as follows, unless otherwise noted. 2. Part 1, the Quiz on The House on Mango Street, which comprises multiple-choice questions to check if the designated chapters have been read. 3. Part 2, Vocabulary, which is a test on the vocabulary you find in Developing Writing Skills 4. The vocabulary in The House on Mango Street will not be included. 4. Part 3, Essay Writing, where you will be asked to write an essay according to the video in English you are given to watch. No subtitles, English or Chinese, will be available on the video. You must bring with you your own print dictionary, without which you will not be allowed to take this writing test.

1. Throughout the semester, there will be 3 in-class writing assignments, each of which will be graded with the scale of 1 to 15. The grades are interpreted as follows: 9 for satisfactory, 10 average, 12 fair, 13 very good, and 14 and above excellent. However, the highest grade you receive for a make-up assignment is 12. 2. The 13 blogs you write will each be graded with the scale of 1 to 5. 3. Keep all your in-class essays for your record. 4. Your semester grade will be calculated according to the chart below: Writing Assignments 15 points Weekly Blogs 30 points Class Participation 10 points Midterm Examination 20 points Final Examination 25 points Extra bonus (with full attendance) 5% of total grade, with total 85 as ceiling Total 100 points 5. If you should miss either the midterm or the final examination, you cannot receive a passing grade for the course. 6. If you have a full attendance the whole semester, you will receive a 5% extra grade for your overall semester grade. For example, if your grade is 80, it will be increased to 84. If after the adjustment your grade exceeds 85, you receive 85. 7. In the case in which a student should owe any missing work by the end of the semester, he or she shall not be allowed to take the final exam. A make-up final will be given only after all missing works have been turned in. As it is a make-up exam, the grade received shall time 0.8, as a penalty. 8. During the interval before the make-up exam is taken, an “incomplete” grade as “I” will be granted as the temporary semester grade. If the student should fail to turn in any missing work or make up for the final by the time when the “incomplete” must be resolved and its final grade be sent, his or her extant grade on file shall be his or her semester grade.

Textbooks: (1) Developing Writing Skills 4: Mastering the Essential Skills through Instruction and Practice. By Regina L. Smalley, Mary K. Ruetten, and Joann Rishel Kozyrev. Learners Publishing and Thomson Learning, 2006. (2) The House on Mango Street. By Sandra Cisneros. Vintage Books, 1984. Recommended: (1) Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus. Merriam-Webster, 2020. (2) Macmillan English-Chinese Dictionary麥克米倫高級英漢雙解詞典 (2024 revised edition). Bookman (書林), 2024. (3) Collins Cobuild English Dictionary: The Source of Authentic English. 9th edition. Heinle ELT, 2018.

地點

HC414

時間

Office hours: Monday, 3:30–5:00 PM, by appointment only

聯絡方式

Instructor: Kien Ket Lim 林建國 (limk@nycu.edu.tw)