Welcome to Reading and Writing 4, term 6, 2009

Welcome to Reading and Writing Level 4 in AUA's Academic English Program.

As we've discussed in class, Quest has both formal academic writing exercises and less formal response writing exercises in every chapter (Hartmann, 2007). During this six week term, we will regularly be doing both kinds of writing.

We will also be reading: both the readings in Quest and a variety of outside readings.

Blogging is a valuable tool for both reading and writing, and we will be blogging every week. Most of the blogging you do will be less academic than the academic writing assignments I give you: it will often be a written response to something you have read, rather than a carefully planned piece of work. However, on some issues, you might want to think a little more, and even cite supporting sources for points you make in a blog post or in a comment on a classmate's post.

If you've never blogged before, don't worry. After the first time or two, it will be easy and you can start playing around with the tools on offer.

It's also OK to have fun with your blogging.

When you are looking around, you might be interested in some of the tools I've put on the right:

• Recent Topics gives links to information and notes about blog topics on which to write
• What's on at AUA is a calendar with term dates and other timely information
• Daily Updates gives links to feeds from some newspapers and magazines
• Useful Links for AEP students are links to some online dictionaries and other resources
• Looking for Something to Read takes you to a range of quality international newspapers and magazines (there are many more - those selected are just a few that I regularly read)
• Members is the list of current AEP students who can post to this blog. After you join, you're name will be there.
• and the archive of posts, and so on

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References

Hartmann, P. (2007). Quest 2 Reading and Writing (2nd. ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.