As American Writer R. W. Emerson (1803-1882) once said, “The best of all ways to make one’s reading valuable is to write about it,” reading and writing are indeed inseparable. The purpose of this course is, likewise, to help enhance students’ basic English writing skills in addition to excellent reading courses already offered in History Department. Our goal is to write well-organized, concisely articulated short essays. The ability of fulfilling a lengthy research paper, for example, fifteen pages, is not yet anticipated in this course.

Students of varied proficiency are altogether welcome; the ones who consider themselves weak in English writing are most encouraged to take this course. We will begin with sentence-level writing proficiency, be very familiar with paragraph structure, and then move on to the introduction of major organizing techniques of essay writing. Each week, we will strictly follow the step-by-step writing technique in accordance with our textbook. Additional passages will be correspondingly selected from other reading courses in History Department in order to activate the effect of model learning. Finally, although this course is not aimed at grammar instruction only, grammar will still be regularly reviewed in order to polish students’ writing style. Related learning resources, either printed or online, will also be introduced from time to time.

注意：
有計劃增進英文寫作能力的同學，請將「寫作一」「寫作二」上下學期課程當成完整的學習進程。想要直接修習「寫作二」的同學，約須具有托福95分以上、雅思寫作6.5分以上的程度。對於課程有疑問的同學，歡迎寫email詢問。