Classes

I have taught two classes, English Writing I and English Writing II. Both are designed for second-year English majors in China who are new to a dedicated writing classes.

To the dismay of my superiors, I did not simply sit around giving practice tests for the Test for English Majors 4 (TEM4), a test that all second-year English majors must pass.

It seemed most students enjoyed these classes, though the workload was intense and demanding compared to other courses. I was the antithesis of the foreign teacher.

English Writing I

This one-semester class is designed to help students master the basics of English style. The first eight weeks focus on syntax, punctuation and modifiers. The next four focus on redundancy, euphemisms and logical fallacies. The final run of the course is an introduction to the Modern Language Association’s style of documentation, and an introduction to types of sources, how to tell if a source is trustworthy and how to detect an author’s bias.

During the course, students are given an opportunity to practice what they learn with lessons on basic essay style. In the course, I begin with the structure of a five-paragraph essay, and dedicate several weeks to trying to pound into the students’ heads that a conclusion should not be the same as what has already been written.

The course contains one midterm—three versions of it for the cheating-inclined—and culminates in a long research paper, which should be no less than ten pages length.

It is aimed at second-year college-level English majors, who know English only as a second language.

• Course syllabus
• Week 8 Handout: Introduction to Editing
  Covers wordiness and euphemisms with a tribute quote to the ultimate enemy of unclear, dishonest language, George Carlin.
• Week 11 Handout: The Big List of Punctuation Marks
  This is a list of how to use every kind of punctuation mark in the English language, with the exception of the interrobang. It was compiled from my own experience, the AP Style Manual and The Chicago Manual of Style. Disagree if you wish — just not in my classroom.
• Midterm Exam A
• Midterm Exam B
• Midterm Exam C (for students doing a make-up)
• Week 14 Handout: Sources
  This guide prepares students for where to find sources, what kind of sources are good to use and gives sample attribution lines for the kinds of sources students are most likely to encounter.

English Writing II

This spring-semester course does not continue where English Writing I left off. Essays suck, and after 20 weeks, I am stick of reading them. Instead, it shifts gears to cover other areas of English writing.

During this class, students will learn some basic journalistic style writing, and will be required to write a news story, a feature story, a review and an editorial. Classes will be dedicated to the formats for each, and to how a news story should be organized. The first assignment is a jumbled news story that students must put in order.

The class dedicates several weeks to preparing for TEM4, then moves on to writing a short story, and has two free weeks at the end for letter writing or poetry: students vote to select one two weeks before.

The midterm for this class is a news story. The final is in two parts: an exam and the short story students must begin working on immediately after the midterm.

• Course syllabus
• Week 2 Handout: Jumbled Story
  Read this news story. Identify which facts are not relevant and remove them, then re-order the remaining details in order of importance. Write a new story using the facts in the order you rank them.
• Week 4 Handout: Copy Editing
  This story contains nearly 70 errors in it. Print it out and correct it using the editing marks introduced in class.
• Final Exam