Sookmyung Women’s University
Graduate School of TESOL
Syllabus - Spring 2015
Week 1
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Introductions to the course, to the materials, assignments, and everything else.
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Discuss the summer reading project.
Go over the writing questionnaire and a short text. A whole class discussion on what we think writing is and some differences between Korean and English views on writing and the writing process.
♦ Speaking vs. writing
Homework: Read Chapter 1 (pp. 3-11) in Raimes (1983).
Get all materials. Start the dialogue journals.
Finish Winter Reading Project.
Writing Assignment 1 - Write a short paragraph of self-introduction.
Week 2
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Raimes (1983) Chapter 1: Teaching Writing in ESL Classes.
Go over some of the main differences between speaking and writing. Review some
of the major approaches to writing in the classroom by trying to design variant
activities from the school texts.
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The pragmatics of writing.
Using the discussion of writing -vs- speaking in the text as a springboard, talk about
some of the fundamental rules and principles of English language writing.
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Descriptive writing
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General paragraph structure
Homework: Read Krapels (1990).
Writing Assignment 2 - Write a descriptive paragraph on desert islands.
Week 3
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Krapels (1990)
Using this article as a follow up to the issues discussed in the previous week, we
review the similarities and differences in L1 and L2 composition and how they
might affect each other.
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Basic sentences.
Go over how the ordering of sentential elements affects meaning and what some
basic English sentences look like.
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Problem paragraphs
Homework: Read Chapter 2 (pp. 12-26) In Raimes (1983)
Writing Assignment 3 - In pairs, write a letter of complaint from an outline.

Week 4
♦ Raimes (1983) Chapter 2: Techniques in Planning the Class: Seven Basic Questions.
Go over each of the seven questions in the text and discuss the practical applications of each one. How can we deal with these things in the reality of the Korean classroom.
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Avoiding wordiness
Homework: Read Friedlander (1990)
Writing Assignment 4 - Write a movie/book/game review.
Week 5
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Freidlander (1990)
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In this seminal article we will go over the idea of first language interference and how
this affects the writing process. How much Korean can and should we use and more
importantly how can we use it to best effect? The discussion of the article should
lead us into the topic of just what things we might want to have the students do in
English and what they can do in Korean.
MATE Writing Test
Following on the idea of context in writing we will take a quick look at the MATE
writing test to get a feel for our homegrown writing assessment tool.
♦ Choosing a topic.
Go over some of the techniques employed in finding topics and then how we narrow
these to find one topic for our writing. Practice using a picture or series of pictures.
♦ Topic sentences
Homework: Read Kroll (1990)
Writing Assignment 5 - Write a narrative paragraph from Internet materials.
Week 6
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Kroll (1990)
In this article we review how much time is actually necessary for writing to develop
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and how we can best use class time in relation to the teaching of writing.
Links and transitions
Do a rewrite of the homework essay (explanatory paragraph) and fix it up.
Go over revision techniques.
Homework: Read Connor and Farmer (1990)
Writing Assignment 6 - Choose one piece of writing to revise.
Week 7
♦ Connor and Farmer (1990)
In this article we look at the advantages of doing a topical structure analysis as a
means of helping students revise their papers. This is interesting because it relates to
the idea of outlining which is also presented this week.
♦ Sticking to the point.
Go over some of the problems people have in sticking to the point and give some
♦ suggestions for how coherence and relevance can be achieved.
Outlining

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Comparison/contrast paragraphs
Homework: Focus on the Midterm Project!
Writing Assignment 7 - Write a comparison/contrast paragraph.
Week 8
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Midterm Project Due
The Essay Writing Process
Homework: Read chapter 3 (pp. 27-49) in Raimes (1983).
Week 9
♦ Raimes (1983) Chapter 3: Techniques in Using Pictures.
Go over the good points of using pictures, some of the ways we can use them, and
some of the more useful techniques. The word pictures is a blanket term used to
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describe many different types of visual aids, such as maps, cartoons, and photos.
Supporting your ideas.
Talk about some methods for finding ideas which will support your topic sentence.
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Start work on the essay. (Picking a topic, collecting ideas)
Homework: Read chapter 4 (pp. 50-67) in Raimes (1983).
Read Eisterhold (1990)
Essay writing - Complete steps 1 and 2.
Week 10
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Raimes (1983) Chapter 4: Techniques in Using Readings.
Review some of the strategies frequently implemented in using reading to help
writing. Decide which of them might be the best for our students and classroom
situations.
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Eisterhold (1990)
Review how reading effects writing and how this relationship is posited to be
different in the first and second language. Endeavor to find some practical
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applications for this by looking at available teaching materials
Choosing good examples.
Go over how writers come up with examples to support their main idea. Then talk
about how we can limit those ideas and pick out just the good ones. Discuss how the
author-audience relationship works to help us limit our scope.
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Come up with good thesis statement.
Homework: Read Chapter 5 (pp. 68-82) in Raimes (1983).
Essay writing - Complete steps 3 and 4.
Week 11
♦ Raimes (1983) Chapter 5: Techniques in Using All Language Skills.
Talk about the benefit of using all four skills simultaneously. Also deal with more |
practical concerns like, how can we do this with the materials we have and do I
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really have the time?
Ordering.

Go over how to determine the order of elements in writing. Talk about the four main
types of order, why we need to order, and how ordering is a helpful tool for all
students not just for writing.
Homework: Read Chapter 6 (pp. 83-94) in Raimes (1983).
Do take-home assignment on controlled writing.
Essay writing - Complete steps 5, 6, 7 and 8.
Week 12
♦ Raimes (1983) Chapter 6: Techniques in Using Practical Writing.
Go over some of the more practical, specifically focused, writing jobs. Talk about
how these should be set up, especially in relation to the texts the students are using
and the level of their students.
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Making an outline.
Talk about how to do this and go over some of the reason why this is so important.
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Also talk about how outlining can be linked to study skills, especially reading.
Organizing writing
Homework: Read chapter 7 (pp. 95-114) in Raimes (1983).
Essay writing - Complete step 9.
Week 13
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Raimes (1983) Chapter 7: Techniques in Using Controlled Writing.
Go over some of the concepts of controlled writing. Talk about the different types of
controlled writing exercises and how they can be formulated. Do several examples
and discuss their strong points.
♦ Linking sentences.
Talk about some of the ways to link sentences. Discuss what words and expressions
are good to use; what types of sentences we need to use to do this
Homework: Read Chapter 8 (pp. 115-138) in Raimes (1983)
Essay writing - Complete step 10.
Week 14
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Raimes (1983) Chapter 8: Techniques in Teaching Organization.
Review some of the specific ways in which English writing is organized. Talk about
some of the best ways of trying to get this across to students of English using
meaningful means.
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Writing a first draft.
Discuss and practice writing a first draft of an essay. Talk about the things that
the writer needs to concentrate on in the first draft.
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Revising.
Talk about the process of revising the first draft. Go over some of the different
levels of revising and how and why we want to do each one. Give some sort of
dichotomy of importance to certain tasks in the revising process.
Homework: Read chapter 9 (pp. 139-155) in Raimes (1983).
Read Leki article.

Essay writing - Complete steps 11 and 12.
Week 15
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Raimes (1983) Chapter 9: Techniques in Responding to Students` Writing.
Talk about some of the main issues surrounding how a teacher can deal with and
grade student writing, even simple sentences.
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Leki. (1990)
Go more in depth about the role the teacher plays in working with student writing.
Talk about some of the major issues a teacher must consider when grading and
marking student writing.
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Introductions and conclusions
Homework: No reading
Essay writing - Complete steps 13 and 14.
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Final Exam: The final exam will be a take home exam. Please do not forget to do it and hand it in promptly on the assigned date.