10%
Attendance
Orientation, the deal, and the difference between writing an essay and writing an academic essay.
Workbook Chapter 1, What an academic essay actually is · pages 9 to 11. Bring the workbook to every class.
PAE develops your academic writing and presentation skills using content from your own major.
You'll choose one research topic in Week 1 and carry it all the way through, from a first paragraph to a final presentation.
Six components. Grading is uncurved, your grade is the work, not the cohort.
The Writing Journal, outlines, draft PPTs and self-reflections all sit inside that 20%, they're not optional extras. Each in-class practice presentation is worth ±0.5% of your final grade.
Write a basic academic essay on a topic in your major, demonstrating:
Plan, prepare and deliver a presentation, demonstrating:
Visit the Writing Clinic at least once before you submit the essay, book a session through the course portal under Services › Writing Center.
Two classes a week, one topic throughout. A red tag marks a graded submission; a dark tag, a deliverable due. Dates may shift for holidays.
Attend at least two-thirds of classes to pass. Up to 5 min late = −0.5; after 20 min you're absent (−2). Tell the professor at the end of class if late.
Accepted up to one week late at −5% per day. After one week: zero.
Not acceptable. Rewrite within 2 days (−10%) or take a zero. A second offence goes to your department. Recycled work isn't graded.
Not permitted unless explicitly allowed, and any use must be disclosed. Undisclosed use: rewrite in 2 days (−20%) or zero.
Find someone you don't know. In English, exchange:
Introduce your partner to the group in two sentences, and say their claim out loud. We'll come back to claims all semester.
Most of you have written essays in English before. Almost none of them were academic essays. That's a useful place to start.
An academic essay takes a defensible position on a question, supports it with evidence, and tells the reader in advance what you'll argue and why it matters.
That's the entire definition. Everything else in this course is method.
A claim a reasonable reader could dispute, not a topic.
Specific sources and data, not general impressions.
Tells the reader up front where it's going and why.
If your essay can be replaced by a bullet list, it was not an argument.
Background, then a specific claim, the thesis, you intend to prove.
Each develops one supporting point with evidence and your analysis of it.
Revisits the thesis, draws out implications, answers “so what?”
Simple to name, hard to do well. The rest of the semester is learning to do each part on purpose.
The verb tells you what kind of essay it is; the kind tells you what shape your thesis takes.
| If the prompt says | You're writing | Your thesis should… |
|---|---|---|
| assess, evaluate, analyse | Analytical | State the conclusion of your analysis, not just the topic. |
| compare, contrast, explain | Expository | Name the differences or causes you'll develop. |
| argue, defend, propose | Argumentative | Stake a claim and preview the supporting points. |
| discuss, comment on, respond | Commentary | Take a defensible position; signal that judgement is coming. |
Commentary is not summary. The body is mostly your analysis of the evidence, not the evidence itself.
The body of a commentary paragraph should be roughly two-thirds your own analysis and one-third evidence.
The reverse is the most common shape submitted, and the most common reason an essay comes back for revision.
The death penalty cannot be defended as a deterrent in the Korean context. A 2019 Ministry of Justice review found no statistical decrease in violent crime in the years after Korea's last execution in 1997, even as the country has remained de facto abolitionist. If deterrence were the genuine mechanism, the moratorium should have produced a measurable rise in exactly the crimes the penalty was meant to prevent. It did not. The deterrent argument depends on a causal claim the data refuses to make. The case for capital punishment in Korea must therefore be argued on grounds other than effectiveness.
If a sentence in your body paragraph could appear unchanged on a book jacket or a Wikipedia lead, it isn't analysis. Rewrite it until your reader could not have written it themselves.
Think of the last thing you wrote in English. How much of it was summary?
Most weak essays are weak because the topic was wrong, too broad to argue, or too obvious to bother. Spend real time here.
Pick a general area in your major, then squeeze it through four narrowing moves. By the fourth you should have something arguable.
Renewable energy in Korea
Offshore wind policy
Why is build-out so slow?
Permitting, not technology, is the binding constraint on Korean offshore wind.
Ask the worst question a reader can ask: so what? If the honest answer is “I don't know,” keep narrowing, it's not a thesis yet.
Underline the directive verb. Name the kind of essay. Write one sentence that could start your thesis.
“Evaluate the role of K-pop in shaping perceptions of Korea abroad.”
“Argue for or against a four-day workweek in Korean SMEs.”
“Compare the energy strategies of Korea and Japan after Fukushima.”
| Sentence | Summary | Commentary |
|---|---|---|
| Squid Game was released by Netflix in September 2021. | ☐ | ☐ |
| Its success suggests global audiences will tolerate, even prefer, subtitled content when the writing is strong. | ☐ | ☐ |
| The show is about a deadly competition with cash at stake. | ☐ | ☐ |
| That the games are children's games is not decoration but an argument about how debt infantilises adults. | ☐ | ☐ |
This is the topic you'll carry all semester, through Presentation 1, the paragraph, the essay, and the final. Choose something in your major you actually want to think about for fifteen weeks.
Write down three general areas in your field.
For each, push it through the four narrowing moves to a draft claim.
Run all three through “so what?” and circle the survivor.
Read your surviving claim to a partner. If they can't disagree with it, it's still a topic, narrow again.
Choose well today and the semester compounds. Choose carelessly and you'll fight it for fifteen weeks.
Research, Sources & Thesis. Library methods, the CRAAP test, APA & IEEE basics, and turning your claim into a real thesis statement.
Week 01 · See you in Week 02, Research, Sources & Thesis