Unit Guide

General Information

Unit convenor and teaching staff	Unit convenor and teaching staff Maria Herke maria.herke@mq.edu.au Margaret Wood margaret.wood@mq.edu.au
Credit points	Credit points 10
Prerequisites	Prerequisites 40cp at 1000 level or above
Corequisites	Corequisites
Co-badged status	Co-badged status
Unit description	Unit description This is a general education unit for students of any discipline who are interested in writing, especially writing for academic, professional and other functional purposes. It aims to provide insights into the English language as a communicative system, and to foster a critical and informed attitude to language use in various kinds of written and multimodal texts. Both in online lectures and face to face weekly tutorials we analyse various principles of linguistic choice and organisation that produce successful written communication. By developing an understanding of what makes for successful communication in the writing of others, writers can also learn to develop techniques for writing successfully themselves.

Important Academic Dates

Information about important academic dates including deadlines for withdrawing from units are available at https://www.mq.edu.au/study/calendar-of-dates

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:

ULO1: Select, synthesise and summarise the main points from written texts.
ULO2: Plan a coherent structure for a piece of writing and construct and maintain an argument.
ULO3: Manage detailed information in setting up a thematic discussion, including managing the topical focus through manipulation of sentence structure.
ULO4: Demonstrate the ways writers might need to modify writing style to suit a particular audience and/or purpose
ULO5: Appreciate, explain and deconstruct interplay between form and function.

General Assessment Information

Late Assessment Procedure

Late submissions without an extension will receive a penalty of 3% of the total mark available for the assessment task per day including weekend days (i.e. this is 3% of the total marks possible for the task – NOT 3% of the marks the student received. For example, if the assessment task is worth 100 marks and the student is two days late their mark for the task is reduced by 6 marks.)
Late submission of an assessment task without an extension will not be accepted at all after the date on which marked assessment tasks have been released to the rest of the class. Any student with unsubmitted work at this date will receive a mark of 0 for the assessment task.
Extensions will only be given in special circumstances, and can be requested by completing the Special Consideration request at ask.mq.edu.au and providing the requisite supporting documentation.
Extensions that will result in submissions after the assessment task has been returned to the class will require a separate assessment task to be completed at the unit convenor's discretion.
For more information on Special Consideration, see the university website https://students.mq.edu.au/study/my-study-program/special-consideration\
If a student fails the unit due to non-submission of an assignment or non-attendance at an exam, an FA grade will be applied in accordance with the University's Assessment Policy.
Unit convenors have the discretion to determine whether or not students should fail a unit on the basis of lateness penalties alone if other learning outcomes of the unit have been met.

Assessment Tasks

Name	Weighting	Hurdle	Due
Argumentative essay	30%	No	21/10/2020
Synthesised summary task	10%	No	23/08/2020
Writing to a Theme	10%	No	04/10/2020
Cohesion analysis	20%	No	06/09/2020
Analytical Essay	30%	No	08/11/2020