Year of study: 3 (winter and summer term); Assessment method: continuous evaluation; Type of course: obligatory, Languageof instruction: English
Objectives of the course: paraphrasing to avoid plagiarism, writing summaries of longer academic texts, successful implementation of an academic stylesheet (APA stylesheet), successful referencing of external sources
The purpose of this course is to equip students with strategies and to develop skills and knowledge that will enable them to write a BA dissertation at an academic level. Thus, the course’s focus on teaching students how to adequately paraphrase, cite and, subsequently, summarize an academic text of about 500-600 words in 250 words’ paragraph, how to combine 2 or 3 sources in a paragraph, and how to implement the APA stylesheet guidelines. All students’ homework assignments must be submitted in a printed form, conforming to the editing standards of BA template (font, spacing, margins, etc.). Each paragraph or summary or table/graph analysis should be treated as the beginning of a BA dissertation chapter and thus should resemble its page outlook (homework title serves as the chapter title, homework text begins where the chapter text begins, with proper use of paragraph indention or its lack); therefore students are required to use the BA template. Homework references should resemble final BA dissertation References, as laid out in the BA template.
COURSE CONTENT
WINTER TERM
discussing
and analyzing APA stylesheet editing/page layout and BA template;
academic register and style (formal vs.
informal) followed by 1 graded homework assignment; analyzing academic articles
(fragments) as an example of academic writing;
exercises on what is considered as plagiarism and an inefficient paraphrase (patchwork, sentence for sentence, problems with using online paraphrasing tools, e.g., https://paraphrasing-tool.com/ ); writing paraphrases of short 1 than 3-4 sentence texts;
students should produce minimum 1 paraphrase of a longer text in-class and 1 as a homework assignment, each and every one properly cited, according to the standards of APA stylesheet;
writing an appropriate Topic Sentence (controlling idea) comprising the message of the paraphrased passage and properly credited, following APA stylesheet guidelines;
identifying the major thought relationships used by the author to provide support; identifying key words/ technical terms or common knowledge/shared language vocabulary which must not be replaced with synonyms, as well as phrases which can easily be substituted for;
APA stylesheet guidelines on how to cite the sources in-text (both direct and indirect citing styles with accurate choice of reporting/referring verbs or phrases);
synonyms, using appropriate academic register, vocabulary and style, concise and lean writing;
1 in-class summary of around 250 words, properly cited and edited, according to the standards of the APA style and 1 summary assigned as homework over the winter mid-term break.
SUMMER TERM
students should produce minimum 1 in-class and 1 homework summary that combines 2 or 3 sources, each and every one properly cited, according to the standards of APA stylesheet, if in a in a printedform, conforming to the standards of APA stylesheet;
1 table and 1 figure (graph/ chart) preceded by its analysis and description, each and every one properly cited and edited, according to the standards of APA stylesheet, when applicable (homework assignment);
APA stylesheet guidelines on how to make final References and using the template Reference sheet;
basic referencing tools -Word, Google Scholar, Zotero;
students should submit at least 2 final BA References (one of which based on students’ own BA diploma sources and one based on the provided exercise sheet);
one 250-300 words summary of a source text selected by the student, pertaining to their BA paper topic.
Credit requirements: To pass a semester, the student’s final score for all graded activities must be at least 60%.
- Nauczyciel: Izabela Krystek