The course is conducted in English。

Many students and researchers struggle to write and communicate their research in a way that is both intuitive and convincing, especially, but not limited, to a cross disciplinary setting. This course will help prepare students to write more clearly, make it easier for their audience to understand what they are saying, and to train students to offer enough support in the direct and indirect arguments that they make within the context of their research and academic writing. These writing skills will be applied in this course to write effective Personal Statements, as well as general proposals. This course will also focus on training students to analyze, create, and support arguments in their academic writing. Students will learn to develop their critical thinking skills and incorporate these skills into their own writing, with the goal of well-presented logical writing within the context of a research article and persuasive writing in general. In addition, this class will also focus on writing clarity, style, and flow. Emphasis will also be placed on communicating research through both speaking and writing as a way to facilitate understanding and communication. This will involve conducting audience/reader analysis, using more active sentence constructions, incorporating syntactic and semantic clarity, utilizing progression and transition strategies, as well as evaluating overall language and jargon usage. In addition, students will learn to develop their critical reading skills in order to present and support research arguments in writing. Critical reading will involve multiple ways of evaluating academic arguments for clarity and logic, while also identifying any logic and argument shortcomings in student’s own writing. In terms of logic, this course primarily focuses on Informal logic, as well and Deductive and Inductive critical thinking skills. These elements of logic will focus and be adapted for an academic writing and oral communication setting. This class will be conducted through a combination of lecture and group work. While there will be a lecture component for each class, this class relies heavily on group work as a means for students to apply the content that is presented in class, and also for the exchange of ideas and opinions. This exchange of ideas will be based on class tasks and activities, but in addition to this, students will be providing peer feedback to each other. This peer feedback will focus on how well the students communicate (through writing and/or speaking) their research, thought process, and their position and arguments. This course will be taught completely in English and will focus on both writing in the sciences as well as the humanities.

The primary aim of this course is to develop students’ ability to use critical reading, logic, and common rhetorical functions in organizing and writing for academic, research, and popular writing. The course focuses on specific rhetorical writing skills such as: definition, description, and argumentation. Major written assignments in this course will focus on incorporating these rhetorical strategies, as well as logical progression and clear and descriptive style, to communicate students’ research to a cross-disciplinary audience. The instructional means adopted in this course include lectures, discussion, and hands-on practice. By the end of the course, students will be able to: 1. Critically evaluate and analyze a variety of texts for academic purposes. 2. Identify features of academic writing in the sciences and the humanities and apply the knowledge of academic writing to organize ideas into a logical and coherent text. 3. Utilize writing and rhetorical strategies for coherence and concision 4. Critique an Editorial or Academic article by identifying fallacies and unclear/unsound logic, and writing in a way that is understandable and clear for a more general audience 5. Evaluate writing for clarity 6. Formulate academic arguments that are well supported through writing using concepts of Aristotelian logic 7. Develop proof-reading and self-editing skills 8. Present their research in both writing and speaking to a cross-disciplinary/multidisciplinary audience and to increase the intelligibility of their research by utilizing content design and rhetorical strategies.

• Class attendance and participation is required. If you are absent for more than 3 classes in a semester, or are often late and/or leave early, your final course grade may be negatively impacted • Lectures are presented in English. All student work will be submitted in English. In class discussions should be conducted for the most part in English • This course is not open to undergraduates or auditors • Although we do not evaluate English levels, students will need to self-evaluate their ability to determine if they have a sufficient level. • All materials are in English. If students need help with advanced grammar for academic writing, I recommend taking the AWEC’s Fundamentals of English Writing class before taking this class. • Registration by COOL does not guarantee students a place in this course. Enrollment will be determined by application and a summary of students’ needs and objectives in writing on the first day of the course. • Late assignments will not be accepted

This primary workload for this course is 2 papers (2-3 drafts each), 2 debates, and 2 presentations. While this might sound like a lot, much of the work is progressive, meaning it builds off of each other. For instance, for each of our papers, the first draft is not going to be a full draft. Instead it will be an outline of the main ideas, where you will get feedback from your classmates and the instructor, before you write a full draft for the second draft, etc... While there are 2 presentations for this course, each presentation is relatively short at 3 minutes In addition to the major assignments, there will be small writing assignments every week. Writing is a skill that need to be developed through doing. Thus, each week there will be a short writing assignment (200 words or less typically) to practice a strategy or principle of logical and clear writing that we cover in class.

Readings will be provided by the instructor

- Browne, M. N., & Keeley, S. M. (2007). Asking the right questions: A guide to critical thinking. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Bowling Green State University. - Glasman-Deal, H. (2016). Science research writing: For non-native speakers of English. London: Imperial College Press. - Moore, B. N., & Parker, R. B. (2015). Critical thinking. New York: McGraw-Hill Education. - Minto, B. (2010). The pyramid principle: Logic in writing and thinking. London: Financial Times Prentice Hall. - Morrow, D.R., Weston, A. (2015) A Workbook for Arguments: A complete course in critical thinking, 2nd Edition. Indianapolis, IN.: Hackett Publishing Company. - Pyrczak, F., & Bruce, R. R. (2017). Writing empirical research reports: A basic guide for students of the social and behavioral sciences. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. - Redman, P., & Maples, W. (2017). Good essay writing: A social sciences guide. London: SAGE Publications in association with the Open University. - Swales, J. M., & Feak, C. B. (2017). Academic writing for graduate students: essential tasks and skills. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.