The Craft of Writing

Module title	The Craft of Writing
Module code	HUC1002
Academic year	2020/1
Credits	15
Module staff	(Convenor)

Duration: Term	1	2	3
Duration: Weeks	11

Number students taking module (anticipated)	150

Module description

This module is a team-taught, interdisciplinary module taken by History and English students. The first part of the module invites you to engage critically with primary sources and to respond imaginatively to them in a coherent and articulate style, while evaluating secondary sources and reflecting on your practice. The second part exposes you to different writing styles and their conventions (e.g. journalism, creative writing, etc.); it introduces you to the principles and channels of communicating your work with non-academic audiences, and it encourages you to practise writing in traditional and non-traditional media and contexts. The module culminates in an assessed portfolio of three items that cover academic and non-academic writing.

Module aims - intentions of the module

The module’s main aims are to introduce you to the conventions of university-level critical writing and to inspire you to appreciate writing as a multi-faceted, innovative, and evolving “craft”. The lectures and workshops will help you develop and perfect a variety of skills essential to your university career and beyond (e.g. close-reading, constructing an argument, engaging with critics, knowing your audience, offering and receiving feedback, and editing your work).

This module will introduce you to a variety of writing styles suitable for third-level and beyond. Through theoretical and practical instruction the module will offer you the opportunity to develop your critical faculties in thinking about your own writing in a variety of contexts (academic writing, non-fictional creative writing, creative writing etc.). The module will also aim to link different forms of writing to employability.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

1. Demonstrate a critical approach to the craft of writing
2. Demonstrate practical skills in composition

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

3. Communicate effectively in both written and oral work
4. Demonstrate an awareness of a variety of different writing and compositional styles

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

5. Demonstrate appropriate research and bibliographic skills, a capacity to construct a coherent, substantiated argument, and a capacity to write clear and correct prose for academic and non-academic audiences.

Syllabus plan

Topics covered may include:

Introduction to academic writing
Close-reading
Argument and Structure
Style and Grammar
Creative fiction and non-fiction
Writing professionally beyond academia

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities	Guided independent study	Placement / study abroad
22	128	0

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Category	Hours of study time	Description
Scheduled learning and teaching	6	Lectures large group teaching (6 x 1 hour)
Scheduled learning and teaching	16	Workshops small group teaching allowing for in-depth discussion of writing and composition (11 x 1.5 hour
Guided independent study	128	Workshop preparation and assessment

Formative assessment

Form of assessment	Size of the assessment (eg length / duration)	ILOs assessed	Feedback method
Weekly writing exercise	600 words (2 x 300 word exercises)	1-4	Peer review in workshop

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Coursework	Written exams	Practical exams
90	0	10

Details of summative assessment

Form of assessment	% of credit	Size of the assessment (eg length / duration)	ILOs assessed	Feedback method
Participation	10	Continuous	1,3-4	Oral feedback with the opportunity for office hours follow-up
Portfolio	90	1500 words	1-5	Written and oral

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Original form of assessment	Form of re-assessment	ILOs re-assessed	Timescale for re-assessment
Participation	Repeat study or mitigation	1,3-4	N/a
Portfolio	Portfolio	1-5	Referral/deferral period

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to redo the assessment(s) as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century, Penguin, 2014
Gordon Harvey, Writing with Sources, Hackett, 1998
John Peck, The Student's Guide to Writing: Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling, Palgrave, 2005
Gerald Graff and Kathy Birkenstein, They Say/I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing, Norton, 2009
William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White, The Elements of Style, Pearson, 1999
Cheryl Glenn and Loretta Gray, The Hodges Harbrace Handbook, Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

ELE: https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=7972

Key words search

Composition, writing, English, history

Credit value	15
Module ECTS	7.5
Module pre-requisites	None
Module co-requisites	None
NQF level (module)	4
Available as distance learning?	No
Origin date	10/05/2017
Last revision date	25/06/2020