Syllabus — Advanced Reading and Writing

Paper Code: 221105 — Advanced Reading and Writing

Marks: 100 · Credits: 4 · Class Hours: 60

This paper trains students in the higher-order sub-skills of reading and writing. In the reading part, the focus is on close and critical reading: students develop an awareness of the devices an author employs for producing an intended effect and the effects they really produce. Reading materials cover journalistic writing and literary texts of different genres.

Reading Covers

• Understanding rhetorical devices used in a text
• Finding explicit and implicit relationships between sentences and parts of texts
• Distinguishing between facts and opinions
• Identifying the author's position, attitude, and tone (negative, positive, neutral, sympathetic, satirical, angry, sarcastic, contemptuous, critical, and others)
• Interpreting and evaluating ideas critically
• Commenting on style

Writing Focuses On

• Writing with a sense of audience
• Establishing the topic focus
• The writer's voice
• Taking a position (negative, positive, or neutral)
• Using appropriate style according to purpose and audience
• Writing academic essays and assignments using MLA and APA styles of documentation

Recommended Reading

• M. J. Murphy — Understanding Unseen (selections)
• Roger Gower and M. Pearson — Reading Literature (Longman)
• Simon Greenall and Michael Swan (1986) — Effective Reading (Cambridge University Press)
• T. U. Sachs — Now Read On (Oxford University Press)
• Neil McCaw — How to Read Texts: A Student Guide to Critical Approaches and Skills

More Recommended Reading

• John McCray and Roy — Reading Between the Lines (student's book)
• Catherine Walter (1982) — Authentic Reading (Cambridge University Press)
• Barr, Clegg, and Wallace (1981) — Advanced Reading Skills (Longman)
• Cleanth Brooks (1960) — Understanding Poetry (Holt, Rinehart and Winston)

For Writing

• Heath Guide to Writing (1990, Heath Publications)
• Anderson, Durston, and Poole (1992) — Thesis and Assignment Writing (Wiley)
• H. Ramsey Fowler (1983) — The Little, Brown Handbook (Little, Brown and Company)
• John Langan (2001) — College Writing Skills, International edition (McGraw-Hill)
• Joseph Gibaldi and Walter S. Achtert — MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (Affiliated East-West Press)
• Karen L. Greenberg (1994) — Advancing Writer, Book 2 (HarperCollins)
• Mary Stephens — Practise Advanced Writing (Longman)
• R. R. Jordan (1995) — Academic Writing (Oxford University Press)

Source: National University Four-Year B.A. Honours syllabus, Department of English, effective from session 2013–2014.