BS SECOND YEAR

SEMESTER III
ENG 400.1
ENGLISH II: ACADEMIC READING AND WRITING

Book Recommendations:
1. Writing for Science and Engineering - 2nd Edition by Heather Silyn-
Roberts
2. The Handbook of Technical Writing by Gerald J. Alred, Charles T. Brusaw,
Walter, E. Oliu, 11th Edition (2015)
3. Technical Writing –Process and Product by Sharon J. Gerson & Steven M.
Gerson Pearson Publication, 9th Edition (2016)

OVERVIEW
English II builds on the groundwork done in the English I module and extends it in two
specific skill areas. Firstly, it seeks to enable students to skillfully read pieces in diverse
genres— including texts in English relevant to their respective fields of study. Secondly, it
looks to empower students to produce a variety of texts, including the forms of writing
practiced in their respective disciplines. As instruments of academic communication, the
course also focuses on developing students grammatical knowledge and vocabulary,
relevant to their academic needs.

LEARNING OUTCOMES
1. Academic and professional reading skills

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• develop speed reading techniques such as space reading, chunking and visualization.
• get rid of obstacles to effective reading such as sub-vocalization, regression and test
fixation.
• develop the stamina for reading moderately long texts and answer related
questions.
• raise questions that bring out the strength as well as the limitations of the witer's
point of view.
• identify properties that differentiate expository, descriprive, narrative and
persuasive texts from one another
• distill key ideas from research articles as well as other multimodal (textual-graphic)
academic material pertaining to their field of study effectively and efficiently.
 2. Academic and professional writing skills

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Write letters to the editor on issues of common concern.

• Prepare a CV and a job application letter customized for the target position (cover
letter)
• Produce short and long texts in genres encountered in their field of study. Eg: for
zoology and psychology students these may include short reports; for history
students these may include short biographical pieces.
• Develop a blog post entry for their own blog on a topic of their own interest.
• Craft a book review of an item relevant to their interest.

3. Academic vocabulary building

Upon successtul completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Master Coxwood's Academic Word List intended for post-secondary academic

communication across disciplines.
• Use synonyms in their writing effectively.
• Differentiate among confusing words including homonyms, homophones and
homographs.
• Consider collocational restrictions in the use of words.
• Appreciate and practice contextually appropriate registers of language and styles of
formality.

4. Grammar skills

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Use complex sentence structures.

• Apply discourse markers appropriately to combine clauses.
• Make use of cohesive devices within and across paragraphs; use direct and indirect
speech skillfully.
• Edit any document containing grammatical inaccuracies.
• Differentiate and deploy active and passive voice.
• Comprehend and use the different types of conditional clauses properly.

Course Contents

• Case studies and short stories for summary writing

• Thorough reading of the novella “Animal Farm” for reading analysis
• Research Report Presentations
 • Essay Writing
• CV/ Résumé; Cover letters/ Recommendation Letters/ Letters to the
editor
• Ielts reading and writing practice tasks

Summary of Activities Aiding the Existing Course Contents

• At-home assignment of Report Writing (10 marks)
• Class Report Presentations (10 marks)
• Ielts reading and writing practice tasks as Class Activity (20 marks)
• Summary writing and book review as Class Activity (25 marks)
• Final Exam: Essay and types of letters (35 marks)

Will evaluate all these activities according to:

• Usage of different sentence structures

• Different grammatical errors, like subject-verb agreement, article/ preposition
usage, voices and narrations, and sentence fragmentation
• Collocations