Syllabus
Course Description:
English 500 is a pass/fail graduate writing course in flipped format that all Koç University graduate students must take in order to receive their degrees. In addition to graduate courses offered by students’ programs that teach them what to write in their academic fields, ENGL 500 provides the students with both the knowledge and the practice on how to write academically in English. Consequently, the main goal of this course is to support the work graduate students are doing in their programs and to help them develop and edit their own writing through skills that will serve them a lifetime. Students have one semester to fulfill the requirements of the course.
A flipped classroom is a learning environment that replaces traditional classroom teaching environments lead by instructors and transfers the initiative and motivation of learning to the student. Instead of attending lectures, students will watch short lecture videos posted on Blackboard and have at least two writing consultations in the Writing Center. ENGL 500 prioritizes active learning, utilizes educational technologies, and provides opportunities of one-on-one consultation and hands-on feedback for students’ papers.
Course Learning Outcomes:
Upon successful conclusion of this course, students will
- recognize strengths and weaknesses in their writing process
- identify the conventions of the academic genres in their fields
- develop skills in using academic writing conventions such as referencing and citation
- collaborate with peers and work in small groups toward the improvement of student writing
- formulate a thesis and express support through a well-written academic paper
- assess their own writing for patterns of errors that come up frequently
Course Material:
All the material you need for ENGL 500 is on Blackboard
Course Requirements and Grading
Subject videos: Students will watch 8 brief videos on Blackboard. To assess their learning, they will either answer the embedded questions during the videos or post their response on the discussion boards of the course. Video titles are Research and Citation, Reading Academic Papers and Writing for an Academic Audience, Introductions and Abstracts, Paragraph Development and Sentence Skills, Data Commentary, Literature reviews, Conference Presentations, Editing Strategies and Writing Concisely.
Paper Submission: Students will submit a paper draft on Blackboard. The paper must be single author, unpublished and unsubmitted, and between 2500 to 5000 words excluding visual material, abstract, references.
Writing Center Consultations: After submission, students will schedule an appointment with Writing Center consultants and bring their paper draft for one-on-one feedback. They will then have two weeks to revise their papers and come for a second feedback session. The deadline for having the first consultation is March 20th. Make sure to make your appointment weeks before as the Writing Center is usually busy.
Final Paper Submission: Students will incorporate the feedback they received and submit their final draft before the designated (TBA) deadlines on Blackboard. Unless there are plagiarism issues, students who edited and revised their paper according to feedback will receive a Successful grade after the submission. The deadline for submitting the final draft is May 1st.
Grading Procedure:
The grade for ENGL 500 is either Successful or Unsuccessful. You will receive a ‘U’ for the course if you:
- do not watch the videos on Blackboard or you do not answer the questions on them.
- do not attend two writing consultations
- do not revise your papers
- do not submit the draft of your papers with your revisions
- do not follow deadlines
- submit work that is not your own
- submit work that is not current
You will receive an “S” for the course if you fulfill all the requirements of the course.
Policies:
Timing in your academic career: Please drop the course if you have not begun writing papers in your program. Otherwise you will have to write a brand new paper for this course.
Scheduling Appointments: If you have not already done so, register to koc.mywconline.com. Do not forget to click on the confirmation link they send after your registration. When you log on to your account, you can see all available appointments for the next three weeks (white boxes indicate available sessions). That means every day, a new day with available sessions at the end of the next three weeks will appear. Keep in mind that you need to schedule your appointments ahead of time; otherwise you will not be able to find an available appointment, especially around the deadlines emphasized above.
Exemption Policy: If you have published an academic article as a first author, then you will be exempt from the course. Proceedings and conference papers are not accepted for exemption.
Office Hours: For issues related to course content, you can sign up for writing center consultations via koc.mywconline.com. For issues related to course itself, you can schedule appointments with the course coordinator via e-mail.
Plagiarism and Collusion: Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s words or ideas as your own, without proper reference. You receive your grade on your own individual work, not another’s masquerading as your own. Any student found plagiarizing on or colluding in writing assignments may fail the assignment, fail the course, and/or be referred to the university’s disciplinary council. This may result in suspension from the university.
You commit plagiarism when:
- You copy someone else’s writing and do not put it in quotation marks and identify the source.
- You take someone else’s writing, change some of the words, and do not identify the source.
- You take someone else’s ideas or sequence of ideas, put them into your own words, and do not identify the source.
- Someone else writes your assignments or changes your writing and thus creates a false impression of your abilities.
You engage in collusion when:
- You receive unauthorized help with your writing by paying or otherwise inducing another person to do the writing for you.