1. Develop a foundational understanding of English grammar, syntax, rhetoric and style as they pertain to both academic and non-academic modes of formal writing.
2. Develop the ability to shape information into persuasive, elegant, and disciplinarily appropriate arguments using up-to-date digital tools of research and composition.
3. Build an historically-informed understanding of English prose style, with the ability to identify salient characteristics of different historical periods, and their implications for contemporary best practice.
4. Learn to reflect critically one’s own writing and that of others, and to give effective criticism that will improve the standard of written communication, while understanding the diversity of linguistic practices in contemporary, global English.
5. Understand the vital role of clear and effective writing and communication in our social and political, as well as our professional, lives.
6. Demonstrate communication skills appropriate to career readiness, including use of online learning technologies, skills of collaboration, and sensitivity to the intercultural and ethical contexts of a diverse learning environment.

All required readings will be supplied by the Barr Smith Library and available through MyUni.

Most readings for this course are brief, and chosen to exemplify one or another facet of form, style, genre or rhetoric. They are exemplars for you to bounce your own writing off of, not just objects for literary analysis.

Supplementary materials such as instructional and interactive videos, as well as links to important external resources, will be available through MyUni.

The main venue for teaching in this course is a weekly two-hour lecture. I rush to emphasise that this will, under no circumstances, involve the lecturer talking about grammar or the like for two hours straight. Lectures will be highly interactive, involving discussion, writing exercises, (formative) in-lecture quizzes, and other activities to break up the session. Lectures will also be recorded.

The weekly tutorials will provide a space for reflection on the concepts introduced in the lecture, and more importantly, discussing and workshopping students' own writing. Online modes for participation will also be available.

1 x 2-hour lecture per week	24 hours per semester
1 x 1-hour seminar (or equivalent) per week	12 hours per semester
6 hours reading per week	72 hours per semester
2 hours research per week	24 hours per semester
2 hours assignment preparation per week	24 hours per semester

TOTAL WORKLOAD 156 hours per semester

Week One
‘What is an Essay?’
The basics of essayistic writing in broad outline. What is an essay supposed to do; how does it work; whom is it for; why was it written? The enduring norms of scholarly expression. Formality, address, diction, thought, critique, exploration, the hazard of expression.

Texts
• Selections from Brian Dillon, Essayism (2017)
• Theodor Adorno, ‘The Essay as Form’
• Montaigne, ‘On Friendship’, ‘On Experience’

Week Two
‘Nuts and bolts: working with sentences I’
Grammar: the laws of our English parts of speech; words, phrases, clauses, and how they are built (phonemes; verbs, subjects, objects, modifiers, etc.). Sound and sense. Agreement. Pronouns and prepositions. Tense, mood, case. Punctuation.

Texts
• Gertrude Stein, ‘Poetry and Grammar’
• Dorothy Richardson, ‘About Punctuation’
• Richard Hudson, English Grammar (1998), excerpts (online through library)

Week Three
‘Nuts and bolts: working with sentences II’
Syntax: the advantages of changing the order of things; identifying repetitive periods and rhythms; creating unexpected breaks and divagations; in short, the sentence as a bearer of style. Dependency: parataxis and hypotaxis. Auxiliaries and modals; branching and binding.

Texts
• Selections from Brian Dillon, Suppose a Sentence (2020)
• David Foster Wallace, ‘Tense Present : Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage’ (2001)
• Henry James, Chapter One, The Golden Bowl (1904)

Week Four
‘Argumetation I’
Bold openings. Paragraphs. Organising your thoughts. Logical forms and fallacies. Knowing your audience.

Texts
• John Milton, from Aereopagitica
• Virginia Woolf, ‘A Room of One’s Own,’ excerpts
• Selections from John T. Gage, The Shape of Reason: Argumentative Writing in College.

Week Five
‘Argumetation II’
Structure. Claims. Evidence. Counterargument. Working towards a conclusion. The sense of an argument as an active intervention, seizing the moment, making a difference.

Texts
• Émile Zola, ‘J’Accuse’
• Emma Goldman, ‘Marriage and Love’
• Selections from John T. Gage, The Shape of Reason: Argumentative Writing in College.


Week Six
‘Being a scholar’
Writing to and from a community of peers. Against ‘expression’ and opinion. The norms of a discipline. Rules and regulations. Citation. Quotation. Paraphrase. What is plagiarism?

Texts
• Barbara Johnson, ‘Melville’s Fist’
• Toni Morrison, ‘Whiteness and the Literary Imagination’
• MLA Style Guide, excerpts


Week Seven
‘Being a writer’
Research. Note-taking. Organization of material.

Text
• C. L. R. James, ‘What Is Art?’
• Patricia Lockwood, ‘Malfunctioning Sex Robot’
• Lydia Davis, “Thirty Recommendations for Good Writing Habits”

Week Eight
‘Rhetoric I’
What is it, over and above evidence and the logic of an argument, that moves an essay forward? How and why does an argument become personal? How do you engage ‘the enemy’, the people who feel differently and who present opposing kinds of evidence? What is the art of persuasion?

• Frederick Douglass, ‘What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?’
• Abraham Lincoln, ‘Second Inaugural Adrress’
• William Wilberforce, ‘Abolition Speech to the House of Commons’
• Sojourner Truth, ‘Ar’n’t I a Woman?’

Week Nine
‘Rhetoric II’
Figures of speech. Why use them? What purpose do they serve? Flowery expression? A bag of tricks…

Text
• Nietzsche, ‘On the Use and Abuse of History for Life’ (1873)
• James Joyce, ‘Aeolus’, from Ulysses (1922)
• Paul de Man, ‘Semiology and Rhetoric’


Week Ten
‘Elements of a style I’
Using grammar, syntax, argument, and rhetoric to forge a consistent, recognisable manner of expression. The return of expression; expression as a form of persuasion.

Text
• Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘Self-Reliance’, from Essays: First Series (1841)
• James Joyce, ‘Oxen of the Sun’, from Ulysses (1922)
• F. L. Lucas, ‘The Harmony of Prose’, from Style (1955)


Week Eleven
‘Elements of a style II’
Style as an ethical dimension of language: the place where the subject stands forth in the midst of convention, regulations, and norms. The place of the “I,” even without the I.

Text
• Joan Didion, ‘The White Album’, from The White Album (1979)
• Susan Sontag, ‘On Style’, from Against Interpretation (1966)

Week Twelve
‘Revision, revision, revision’
Writing is rewriting. A first draft is a ladder to be kicked away. Style arrives as the ‘subsumption’ of the earlier draftwork in a crystallizing revision.

Text
• Hannah Sullivan, The Work of Revision (2013)
• K. K. Ruthven, ‘Making,’ from Critical Assumptions (1979)

(Subject to minor revision; where full texts are listed, specific excerpts will be supplied to students.)

A typical academic writing course might aim to train you in writing the kind of essay expected of you in other university courses. The aims of this course differ: we want to provide you with the fundamental tools for good prose such that, not only will your writing for other courses improve, but your writing in general will improve as well.

As such, assessment in this course is highly directed towards skill acquisition, and will comprise of some quizzes on basic concepts of grammar and syntax, a portfolio of writing produced across the semester exemplifying your engagement with different writing techniques, and two short essays that put these techniques together.

We wll offer promts for each of your written assignments, but these will be starting points only: what you write about will ultimately be up to you. Our aim is for you to get better at writing about the things you are passionate about, not just the things the university expects you to write about.

4 x Quizzes
6 x Writing Exercies, i.e. fortnightly (~350 words each)
2 x Essays (1200 words each)

(Subject to minor change; a detailed breakdown of assessment tasks will be published on MyUni)

Submission of written work will be via MyUni, and using online tools to assist in giving iterative feedback and detailed advice on the grammar, syntax, style and rhetoric of students' prose.