Course Description

Sean Allan
Fall 2007
Office: 121 DFLL Building
Office Phone: 3366-3960
Office Hours: Monday 3-4pm, Tuesday 11-12pm, Wednesday 2-3pm, Thursday 2-3pm, and Friday 12-1pm.
E-mail: allans@ntu.edu.tw

English for Non-Majors
This course will improve students’ aural, oral, reading and writing skills. Students will improve their ability to think critically in English and argue in English in a rhetorically effective way. Students will cultivate the skills of summary, analysis, observation, and research presentation in the expository essay format necessary for college-level work and beyond. The class will look at and interpret many kinds of writing, from journalism to cultural criticism to scientific reportage. When appropriate, course material will take a media ecology approach (i.e. it will look at the way in which media and culture coexist). The course will expand students’ vocabulary and practical knowledge of grammar and style.

The course will be entirely in English.

Fall Semester Course Objectives
1. Reading texts at a college level; writing about texts at a college level.
2. Close reading of a document’s style, so that one can not just summarize an argument, but recognize how an argument is written to persuade an audience.
3. Writing expository essays with a clear focus.
4. Learning to use others’ ideas to create one’s own ideas.
5. Learning to use in-text citation (through various citation methods, including MLA, APA, etc.)
6. Learning to recognize and use rhetorical and grammatical conventions in written and spoken English.



Course requirements include the following:
1. Regular attendance and participation. 10%
2. Written assignments (short essays and in-class essays) 50%
3. Oral reports and projects and aural projects 20%
4. Tests, quizzes and Exams 20%

Course Materials
For Aural training

Sampson, Nicholas. Way Ahead: A Listening and Speaking Course. Hong Kong:
Macmillan Publishers, 2001 reprint. This is a workbook and 5 CDs. Remember to buy the CDs.
--Available at Bookman. The book should be available to you by the middle of the first week of school.

For Reading and writing

Conlin, Mary Lou. Patterns Plus: A Short Prose Reader with Argumentation.
Eighth Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005.

The syllabus is subject to change with notice.