Development and Writing Skills in English aims to help students develop as writers within the English-speaking academic community by raising awareness of, practicing, and reflecting upon the regulations, norms and written conventions of a standard piece of writing. The course will implicitly improve the overall English language mastery of students by utilizing scaffolding learning methodology of task- based assignments in a step by step learning process. The course will reinforce academic reading skills aiming to improve students’ reading and learning style towards more effective reading of professionally and scientifically intermediate/advanced English level texts. It also aims at developing critical thinking thus enabling students to respond to ideas in a cohesive and coherent and original, well-organized written style.
To equip students with the analytical/critical reading and writing skills needed to carry out academic endowments at Brussels College as well as in any other professional or academic English speaking environment . - to Acquire an awareness of and ability to use effectively the discourse patterns of academic English - to improve the reading and learning styles of students enabling them to think, read, reflect , analyze and write more effectively and coherently - To have the opportunity to develop writing process through generating ideas, drafting, peer evaluation and team work assessment - to sharpen reading, writing and public speaking skills through defending the written work convincingly through argument in verbal manner.
| Week | Topic |
|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction; My first essay. Process writing. Understanding process writing, the writing method used in most English-speaking university classes (1-5).Brilliant writing tips for students (1-8). |
| 2 | Pre-writing: Getting ready to write. Learn how to choose and narrow a topic, gather ideas, and edit ideas (6-11). |
| 3 | Reading and Comprehension Strategies. Tenses, Conditionals (Grammar in use 54-84). |
| 4 | The structure of a paragraph. Brilliant writing tips for students (13-20).The development of a paragraph. Learn the definition of a paragraph, the parts of a paragraph, how to identify and write topic sentences(12-24). |
| 5 | Ethics in Research Paper Writing and Referencing Style. Brilliant writing tips for students (27-56).Reported speech, relative clauses and conjunctions (Grammar in use 120-160). |
| 6 | Descriptive and process paragraphs. Learn about descriptive paragraphs and reasons for writing them, organization, and writing a descriptive paragraph using adjectives and prepositions. Summarizing and paraphrasing (25-32). |
| 7 | Midterm Exam |
| 8 | Opinion paragraphs. Learn how to distinguish between fact and opinion, organize and write a paragraph that expresses opinions and arguments, use transitive words to express causation, use modal expressions to make recommendations (33-39). |
| 9 | Comparison / Contrast paragraphs. Learn about compare/contrast paragraphs and reasons for writing them, how to organize compare/contrast paragraphs, linking words used to compare and contrast topics, how to write about the advantages and disadvantages of a topic (40-49) . |
| 10 | Problem / Solution paragraphs. Write about problems and solutions, use real conditions, write a two-paragraph text with connecting phrases (50-55). |
| 11 | The structure of an essay. Outlining an essay, Introduction and conclusions. Critical thinking in writing. Learn the definition of an essay, how to format an essay, how to write a thesis statement (56-77).Brilliant writing tips for students (78-88). |
| 12 | Unity and coherence. Learn the importance of unity in essay writing, how to edit an essay for unity, the importance of coherence in essay writing, methods of creating coherence. Report writing(78-87).Brilliant writing tips for students (95-98). |
| 13 | Presentation |
| 14 | Presentation. Review for final exam. |
| Method | % Each | Quantity |
|---|---|---|
| Midterm Exam(s) | 30 | 1 |
| Project | 20 | 1 |
| Final Exam | 40 | 1 |
| Attendance | 10 |
Dorothy E Zemach, Lisa A Rumisek. Academic writing from paragraph to essay. Longman Academic Writing Series : Essays, Fifth Edition 2020. Advanced Academic English. A Handbook For University Writing with Glossary. Dina Award (2023). Brilliant Writing Tips For Students. Julia Copus (2025).