BBI2424 ACADEMIC WRITING/SEM1/2015-16/WP/OVERVIEW

Writing Portfolio: Overview

The objective of the writing portfolio is to guide students in constructing grammatically correct and coherent sentences within well-structured academic texts.

It also trains students to edit their work by completing a self-reflection form on their writing at the end of the task.

Through the completion of the tasks, students are exposed to the process of planning, developing, writing and editing academic texts.

Students will also learn to avoid plagiarism in academic writing by employing methods such as paraphrasing, summarising and using appropriate conventions for citing and referencing.

In this portfolio, students are allowed to choose a topic relevant to their field of study. The topics/issues chosen must be able to inform, to educate or to raise awareness among the

intended audience. The writing portfolio is divided into 3 parts: 1. Task 1 2. Task 2 3. Task 3

Writing Portfolio: Task 1 (10%)

The objective of Task 1 is to expose students to the process of writing an outline for an academic text.

In Task 1, students work individually. They choose a topic based on their field of study and write an outline of an academic text on the topic. The outline should consist of a topic, a thesis statement, topic sentences, relevant supporting points and concluding sentences.

The task begins in Week 1 and ends in Week 4.

Writing Portfolio: Task 2 (10%)

In Task 2 students develop the supporting points from the outline in task 1 and add supporting details from credible sources in the form of in-text citation.

To avoid plagiarism, students incorporate the information from credible sources through the use of paraphrasing and summarising and APA citation style.

The task begins in Week 4 and ends in Week 10.

Writing Portfolio: Task 3 (10%)

Students write 2 paragraphs using the thesis statement, topic sentences, supporting sentences, supporting details and concluding sentences they have developed in Task 2. Students also edit their paragraphs for sentence errors.

The task begins in Week 10 and ends in Week 13.