SOC 2201 RESEARCH WRITING                             Term 2, 2004-2005                                        

M7-9                                                                                      Pedro Ng

Room 429, Sino Building                                                           Dept. of Sociology, CUHK

                                                                         E-mail: pedropakng@cuhk.edu.hk

                                                                                                

This course is designed to enhance the writing skills of sociology students so that they will become more competent in meeting the writing needs of their major discipline, especially in preparing adequate research papers

Students will learn essential skills such as writing effective sentences and coherent paragraphs, summarizing, paraphrasing, acknowledging sources and listing references (using both ASA and APA styles), and understanding and describing research findings. Students will scrutinize selected research papers to see how they are organized and written in a proper academic style. They will also practise writing specific paragraphs relevant to research papers.

Students in this course will learn to grasp the important idea that good writing is often careful rewriting, and will be asked to develop careful habits in many aspects of the writing process. Matters of grammar, usage, choice of words, sentence construction, and punctuation will be discussed as they relate to the writing task in question.

Requirements of the course include pre-course preparatory assignments, weekly written assignments, tests in English usage, and writing on the course’s WebCT forum.