ENGLISH 121G Reading/Writing/Texts
This page describes the General Education course, ENGLISH 121G Reading/Writing/Texts. Includes the learning outcomes, topics covered, delivery format and timetable.
Schedule
Schedule G: Communication
Semester
Summer School, Semester One, Semester Two
Campus
City Campus for Summer School, Semester One and Semester Two
Epsom and Manukau for Semester Two
A course developing close reading, academic writing and critical analysis, with skills applicable across University subjects. Addresses the needs of students in disciplines where both writing and reading academic texts have an important role in learning. The course foregrounds rhetorical analysis, fosters individual writing skills in workshops and introduces writing as a subject of study in itself.
No matter what your major or degree, English 121 aims to help you develop effective strategies for close reading, critical thinking and expository or analytical writing.
We emphasize writing which poses cultural and social questions and we consider ways of understanding, analysing and critiquing these questions in different textual forms and genres.
We explore how to make and read texts in different verbal and visual forms and across different platforms (print and digital). Course readings, with a view to multiliteracy, include academic, literary, journalistic and media texts.
English 121G is designed for students with good university-level spoken and written English language abilities. It is not an ESOL writing course. Students will be advised as to the appropriate course placement depending on writing diagnostic exercises.
English 121G will help you to:
- Read, critically analyse and discuss complex texts from different academic disciplines or subjects.
- Synthesize arguments drawn from a number of texts to support your thesis.
- Tackle various writing tasks with confidence by using effective techniques for generating ideas and gathering evidence.
- Identify the purpose, audience and style of different modes of argument.
- Cite and reference in a manner appropriate to the text genre.
- Develop an understanding of grammatical written expression in your own and others’ writing.
- Evaluate and edit the work of others using constructive, informed feedback.
- Texts and rhetoric.
- Personal narrative and making stories.
- Text-types and intertextuality.
- Public writing and constructing arguments.
- Digital writing technologies.
- The politics of popular culture and place.
Summer School – three lectures and three tutorials/workshops per week.
Semesters One and Two - one lecture per week and two tutorials/workshops per week.
- Three critical thesis-driven essays.
- Four or five writing activities.
- An essay-based two-hour final exam.
A coursework reader is made available which includes the course outline and all readings for the course. The same is also made available on Cecil.
Semester One
Dr Mark Amsler
Email: m.amsler@auckland.ac.nz
Phone: +64 9 373 7599 ext 87516
Semester Two
Dr Stephen Turner
Email: sf.turner@auckland.ac.nz
Phone: +64 9 373 7599 ext 85658
Summer School and Epsom/Manukau
Dr Aimee Inomata
Email: a.inomata@auckland.ac.nz
Students regularly comment that English 121G involves a heavy workload of reading and writing but that the extensive writing exercises and informed feedback improve their academic writing and critical reading.
