The
focus of the class will be on developing the participants’ academic writing
skills in English. There will be opportunity during the sessions for
participants to produce academic writing as well as to reflect on their own
productions and give feedback on others’ productions. We will explore paragraph
structure, a variety of academic genres, essay structure, working with sources,
creating outlines, writing better sentences, and post-production skills,
including peer feedback and self-reflection.
The
focus of the class will be on analyzing the use of language in a variety of
media, from advertising to political speeches, from TV shows to casual
conversations, and how this use of language can serve as an indicator of
systemic discrimination in our society. We will look at the relationship
between language and constructs like sex and gender, ethnicity, age and
relationship status, disability, etc. You will learn to identify discriminatory
language and unconscious bias to avoid it in your own language use or correct
it in others' use.