Language Learning at University
WS 2002/2003
Sutherland
Writing in English
In the course of your English studies at the University of Bremen, you will be expected to
do a fair amount of writing in English; much of it will be for language classes, but you
will also have opportunities to write papers in English for literature and cultural studies
classes. Writing skills are practiced in the following language classes:
Class:
SWS
Language Learning at University (Unit)
2
When do I take it?
st
1
nd
semester
semester
Required?
yes
University Writing Skills
3
2
yes
Reading, Speaking and Writing Skills
(G)
3
3rd or 4th
yes
Listening, Speaking and Writing Skills
(G)
3
3rd or 4th
yes
Introduction to Creative Writing
3
Grundstudium
no
Intensive English (G)
2
Grund- Hauptstudium
no
Reading, Speaking and Writing Skills
(H)
3
Hauptstudium
no
Listening, Speaking and Writing Skills
(H)
3
Hauptstudium
no
Advanced Essay Writing
2
Hauptstudium
no
Professional Report Writing
3
Hauptstudium
no
Workshop: Essay Writing for Exams
2
Hauptstudium
no
Intensive English (G, H)
2
Grund- Hauptstudium
no
It is also possible to work on your writing in Language Advice Workshop (2 SWS,
Hauptstudium).
What is important about writing at university and in the “real” world?

Style, register, diction (voice, word choice) and content (ideas) are as important
as grammatical and lexical accuracy.

Your reader may well be someone other than your teacher (e.g. a classmate or
Language Learning at University, Writing in English - 2
an admissions counsellor at an English-speaking university).

You (i.e. not your teacher) are responsible for the quality of the work you
produce. You will receive different kinds of feedback, including comments from peers
and partial marking by your teachers to help you learn to evaluate your own work.

The volume of written work is greater at university than in school.
Assumptions we make about writing:

Writing is an intentional (purposeful) communicative act involving a writer, a reader,
and a text.

No matter how good a writer you are, you can always improve.

Writing is a recursive process; approximately 80% of your effort should go into prewriting and post-writing activities, which leaves 20% for writing.
Writing as a (Recursive) Process
Pre-writing (ca. 40%)
Writing
Post-writing (ca. 40%)
Generative (Discovery) activities:
Revising
Brainstorming
Free-writing
Cognitive mapping:
mind-mapping
clustering
treeing
Free association with a
randomly
chosen word
Does it have a controlling
idea?
Does it make sense?
Is it well-organized?
Have you left out important
information?
Have you included irrelevant
information?
Is the style appropriate?
Do you use transitions and
other signposts effectively?
Does it have an effective
opening? ...ending?
Information gathering activities:
Library research
Internet research
Interviews
Surveys
Mining your writer’s journal
Organizing information:
Outlining
Cognitive mapping (see
above)
Writing
is
a
matter
of
putting
one
word
after
another
until
the
draft
is
finished.
Editing
Check for correct...
Syntax
Spelling
Punctuation
Form
Check for
economy of expression
clichés
sentence variety
Language Learning at University, Writing in English - 3
Tips for getting the most out of your writing practice.

Keep a writer’s journal. Write in it for ten minutes a day. Your journal should be a
place where you collect ideas and record feelings and observations (and anything else
that strikes your fancy). It should not be a diary in which you keep track of what
you did on a given day (e.g. “Slept through the alarm. Had oatmeal for breakfast.
Late for class, etc.”

Keep a list of the kinds of errors (and their frequency) you make on written
assignments. Choose one kind of error at a time to eliminate. Refer to the Mistakes
Clinic for help.

Set aside a regular time to write, then use it!

Keep writing and editing activities separate. Do not let your critical side intimidate your
creative side by criticizing your work before the words have hit the page.

Type or word-process your work before you begin revising and editing. You will find
it is much easier to spot mistakes when the text is not in your own handwriting.

For longer writing assignments: Try writing during the day. Then, just before you go
to bed at night, read what you have written. Resist the temptation to make changes.
Keep the text beside your bed so that you can make changes and corrections when
you first wake up—before you are fully awake in the morning.
Sounds eccentric, but
it works!

Before you start to write, ask yourself who your intended reader is and what, exactly,
you are trying to accomplish with your text. Consider how the answers to these
questions will affect what you write and how you write it.
Rules for text production:

Type or word-process your written assignments.

At the top of the page, left-justified, include the following information:
Print on one side of the paper only.
Your name
The name of the class
The teacher’s name
The assignment (e.g., Process Description) and information about the version
(e.g., rough draft, first revision, second revision, final version)
The date

Unless you are told otherwise, double-space your written work so there will be room to
mark up the text. In addition, leave a 5 cm margin on the right-hand side of the
paper for more detailed comments.

The title of your essay (not the assignment name, but the title you give your essay)
should be centered and bold (Fett).
Language Learning at University, Writing in English - 4

Using the TAB key, indent the first line of each paragraph 1 cm, including the first
paragraph.

If the paper is more than one page long, add a header or footer that includes your
name and the page number on the second and following pages.

Ask your teacher about additional requirements regarding the appearance of your paper,
such as additional header or footer information.

Do your own work. Let your ideas shape the paper, not someone else’s. Use
primary and secondary sources judiciously to support your assertions, but be sure you
attribute them correctly. (Refer to the writing resources listed below for correct
bibliographic forms.)

If you would like to submit the same paper for more than one class, get permission
from both teachers first.
* * * * *
Internet Writing Resources, including Bibliographic Reference Guides
Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute Writing Handouts
http://www.rpi.edu/dept/llc/writecenter/web/handouts.html
Purdue University Online Writing Lab
http://owl.trc.purdue.edu/by-topic-alternate.html
http://owl.trc.purdue.edu/by-topic.html
Writing Center (includes APA and MLA citation formats)
http://www.researchpaper.com/writing.html
Hunter College Writing Center
http://myst.hunter.cuny.edu/~rwcenter/writing/on-line.html
Grammar and Style notes
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jlynch/grammar.html
Language Learning at University, Writing in English - 5
Activity 1
You are participating in a program called “Buddy-Buddy” organized by the International
Students Office (Akademisches Auslandsamt) at the University of Bremen. The program is
designed to help incoming international students feel welcome and to give them a sense—
from a student’s point of view—of what it is like to live in Bremen and to study at the
University here. In your first letter to your buddy, you introduced yourself and told
him/her about your family and where you grew up and you offered to answer any
questions s/he might have about what it is like to study and live in Bremen. This is the
letter you received in return:
November 3, 2002
Dear Buddy-Buddy,
Thanks for your letter. I really enjoyed hearing from you and hearing
about your family and your home town. Let’s see if I can return the favor.
I grew up in a small town in eastern Washington called Colfax. The
summers are hot and dry and the winters cold and snowy here, and there’s not
much around but wheat farms, as far as the eye can see, unless you go to
Pullman or Spokane. My family owns a wheat farm, and I learned to drive a
tractor before I could ride a bike. When you fly over our farm in the early
summer, it looks like a piece of polka-dotted cloth— where the wheat is
irrigated, you see green circles.
Pullman has a university (where I’m studying German and English)
and Spokane has a small opera company, an orchestra, and the best shopping
this side of Seattle, if you’re interested in that kind of thing. Maybe you can
understand now why I am really looking forward to coming to Bremen.
Europe seems so far away, so exciting, so different!
I have at least a thousand questions I would like to ask you. What are
Language Learning at University, Writing in English - 6
the professors like? What are the classes like? How much homework is there?
Are the exams hard? What is the food like on campus? Are there any good
places to hang out around the university? What do students do for fun on the
weekends? How much does it cost to get an e-mail account? How much will I
have to spend on books each semester? Do I need a car? Are there student
residences, or do I have to find an apartment on my own? How much should I
plan on spending for an apartment? What about utilities and stuff (you
know, electricity, phone, etc.)? If I decide to live in an apartment, do I have to
sign a lease, or can I rent on a monthly basis? Do I have to pay a deposit?
What kind of bureaucratic stuff do I have to go through? Finally, what do I
need to know that I haven’t asked about yet?
Well, I don’t want to overwhelm you, so I ’ll stop here for now. Thanks
in advance for all your help and good advice. My parents are glad that I have
“met” someone in Bremen already so they won’t have to worry about me being
all alone in a strange city.
Your new Buddy-Buddy,
Sam
Task: Write a letter in response to Sam’s in which you try to answer as many of his/her
questions as you can. If you don’t know the answer to a question, say so, but try to
suggest where this information might be obtained. Try to put yourself in the reader’s
position (e.g. someone from a small, agricultural town in the Western United States who
has never been to Europe before, let alone Germany or Bremen); rather than giving
“minimalist” answers, try to anticipate your reader’s information needs, and select and
organize your information accordingly.
N.B.: “Sam” may be either male (Samuel) or female (Samantha) – it’s your choice!
Language Learning at University, Writing in English - 7
Activity 2:
The editors of “Student Voices,” a European magazine for university students, have asked
you to write a report on the experiences of first semester students at the University of
Bremen for a special issue on what first-semester students experience at German
universities. The article should be written in the third person, though you may want to
include a few first-person anecdotes to illustrate general statements about “the firstsemester experience.” To make your description representative of more than one person’s
experience, you may also want to include comments by—or anecdotes about—other firstsemester students you know. If you do, be sure you either a) get their permission to
share their experiences with the magazine’s readers or b) change their names to protect
their privacy. Select and organize the information you present to suit your audience (other
European university students, most of whom will be unfamiliar with the German university
system).