This is an introductory course designed to equip students with writing fundamentals, which will be applicable to all future written communication, and which will form the pre-requisite for advanced courses. The course will emphasize meeting the reader?s basic expectations of where in the text information should appear, and how changes in information placement influence the impact of the text. The course will also provide students with guidance on making engaging presentations without slides to a non-specialist audience. Lessons will be highly interactive, and offer multiple opportunities to write, present, and get and give feedback.
-
Year Taken: AY19/20, Sem 1
Grade: B+You thought you could escape English lessons in a science course right? ES0138 is the sort of course where if you’re good at it, awesome, but if you’re bad at it… there’s really nothing much you can do about it unless you can become a better writer AND speaker overnight. This course is taught by Prof Pavel Adamek, Language and Comms specialist in ASE (Pa-vell… Pa-ver, I don’t know but apparently someone had a daddy crush on him in class so…). Its gonna be one of those important “life-skill” courses but ironically a freaking chore to attend especially when it starts at 0930 and the red bus is heckin’ slow. Oh by the way, Pavel is super strict with the emails you send him, so don’t go all out abbreviations, emojis, and XOXO with him or he’ll just ignore them.
Tutorial and Class participation (?) | Average 3/5?
Basically, every lecture/tutorial (at least for the first half of the sem) teaches you how to write research papers with “flow” so that you can develop an coherent argument for your target audience. Homework typically requires you to correct/ rewrite a paragraph and you’ll be assessed on that. I’m generally not a good writer so I consistently got 2-3.5s out of 5 marks.Essay (50%)
Towards mid sem, you’re expected to write a 1000 word essay on any scientific topic that you want, keeping in mind proper “flow”, grammar and valid arguments. Despite the low word count, I swore I took way more effort than 2AUs correcting my essay (about cigarette pollution) over and over again.Presentation (45%?)
Final half of the sem requires you to come up with a solo 5 min presentation to inform/convince your classmates on a particular scientific topic (I presented on the effects of plant-based diets on athletes, in honor of my vegan girlfriend heh). The presentation have to be done ted-talk style, with proper hand gestures (“chop”, “show”, “gift”) and posture. Thus, not only do you have to memorise your script, but also maintain proper (yet unnatural) body-language. I had problems with over-gesturing so Pavel recommended holding bottles/dumbbells while practising so I don’t flail my hands around. Be prepared to cringe at yourself because you’re expected to film yourself every lesson so you can look back and improve on your presentation skills.This review was reposted with the kind permission of Roy. Originally published at https://djtangent.wordpress.com/2020/05/13/testing/
June 11, 2021
