IQRA UNIVERSITY

IU

Faculty of Management Sciences DBA-SPRING 2013

WELCOME TO THE CLASS Course Class Timings Term Course Lecturer Email Availability Off Days Course Duration Course Description Writing Skills HMT 114 (EDP Code 1082) Tues 11:45 02:45 pm Spring 2013 Dr. Imran Khan (Asst. Prof.) khan.i@iuk.edu.pk 8:30 am 4:30 pm Wednesday & Thursday 15 Weeks Writing Skills HMT 114 is a preparatory writing course designed for students entering any undergraduate program at university. IUGC provides a lot of opportunities to enhance your skills, particularly in knowledge, soft skills, ability, and credibility so as to enable you to compete and progress both academically and in your future workplace. This course will also focus on writing skills, grammar, mechanics and reading will augment students proficiency in target language in order to improve their receptive and productive skills. The goal of writing skills course is to support you improve your writing, oral, and collaborative skills necessary for future business courses, thesis writings, written assignments, internships, and professional positions. This course aims to help you express clearly, concisely, convincingly, and create impressive formal presentations that are delivered with confidence and poise. Students will be able to produce unified, well-organized and coherent essays on a variety of topics in preparation for the writing of essays on both academic and non academic topics. After successfully completing the course you will be able to: a)write in a variety of styles (narrative, descriptive, expository,

Objectives

Learning Outcomes

persuasive) b) critically evaluate a variety of reading passages

c) summarize texts d) paraphrase texts e) write for a variety of purposes and audiences f) apply the writing process (prewriting, writing, and revising) g) demonstrate basic grammar and sentence skills in writing h) demonstrate basic word processing skills in written assignments i) develop his/her personal writing style/voice j) Self-edit writing and analyze other writing samples k) Carry out library and on-line research l) Plan and deliver a short presentation m) Apply techniques for adapting messages to the audience and for developing 1

effective sentences and unified and coherent paragraphs n) Organize and deliver an oral presentation o) Revise and proofread a message for organization, content, style, mechanics, format, and layout Each class will consist of a combination of lecture, discussion, group work, and Delivery individual writing activities. Some time will be allowed for starting assignments Methods/Format in class, but most of the writing assignments will be completed outside of class time. Students should expect to put in about four to eight hours of work per week outside of class time. All students are required to maintain 80% of his/her attendance. In case the Attendance students fail to maintain 80% of attendance, they become ineligible to take the final exam and are awarded F Grade. This is a zero tolerance policy. Course textbook and Langan, J. (2010). Exploring Writing (second edition), New York: McGraw-Hill (Part One, Two, and Four); Monolingual dictionary either Cambridge or Oxford monolingual dictionary The assessment for the course is based on your class participation, quizzes, Assessment assignments which include presentations, mid-term and final exams. For your presentations and assignments, the topic must fit within the general area of the course. Do not start to work on the assignment until you have finalised on both topic and format, and this has been recorded by the course lecturer. Students who unable to submit an assignment due to any serious reason by the Assignment Policy due date should discuss the matter in advance with the lecturer. Late assignments will not be accepted. All due assignments i.e. soft and hard copy will be submitted to the course Assignment lecturer. Submission Guidelines All students are expected to attend the course and maintain the decorum of the Assignment, class. Plagiarism will not be tolerated. YOU WILL FAIL IF YOU COPY Discipline & SOMEONE ELSES WORK! Your assignment will be processed in Turnitin Academic Software. If you need any guidance you will seek the course lecturers Requirement assistance. In all areas of the university environment, students are responsible to show Class Etiquette respect for others, swearing, or language that is discriminatory or derogatory in relation to race, gender, ethnic background, religious beliefs, age and physical condition is not appropriate. All students must observe respect for each other. Student making fun of anyones mistake will be penalized. In groups and in class you must respect the differences of opinion and to bring everyone into discussion. Therefore, it is one of your responsibilities to work together in order to create a comfortable and friendly environment where all students can express their opinions, doubts, questions and queries freely. In order to be successful in classes and minimize distractions for others, cell Electronic Devices phones, iPods and other electronic devices must be turned off while students are in class. In an emergency situation, the instructor may give a student permission to use a cell phone or pager. a) Articles 1 - 15: 5% (Submission hard & soft copy by March 5th , 2013) Marks Distribution b) Articles 16 - 30: 5% (Submission hard & soft copy by April 9th , 2013) b) Listening & Writing Quiz: 5% b) Ppt. Presentation from 55 topics: 5% (After midterm/5 students per class) c) Portfolios/Class participation: 15 % (handwritten) c) Mid-term: 25% (Exam pattern: Subjective & objective) 2

Grading Scale

d) Final Exam: 40% (Exam pattern: Subjective & objective) e) Full attendance: 5% (Bonus Marks which will be added in final exam) [88 100 = A; 81 87 = B+; 74 80 = B; 67 73 = C+; 60 66 = C; <60 = F]

Individual assignments: Task description:

Article writing for English for University Students

Write articles of 400 words each on thirty issues given below (see marks distribution column for this assignment). Try to make your writings as interesting as possible. Your readers are the ones who have just joined BBA programme and hardly have subject knowledge about the issues presented. It is better to define the terms first, interest them in your writings by giving examples from their world and discuss with interesting facts. English used in the articles has to be original. However, you can use books and online services to gather information and put it in your English. The whole texts will be scanned with anti-plagiarism software, Turnitin, which will identify plagiarized parts of the work. Marks will be deducted according to similarity index. Less than 10% similarity will not be penalized. TASK SPECIFICATIONS

Turnitin:

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

What is stress? Do you get stressed at University? Is stress-related illness common in developing countries? What are some creative ways to manage it? Pros and cons of teamwork What is confidence building? Does confidence really come with knowledge? My ideal workplace Do you think top executives are too highly paid? Or do they deserve what they earn? Flextime job is better than nine-to-five job. Do you agree? What are the secrets of time management? Role of decision making in making an organization successful. Who are the most famous bosses in todays world? How do they head their companies? Are business leaders born or made? What are the qualities of a true leader? What is the significance of textile industry? What is its role in Pakistan? Which is the most important invention for the last 100 years? Which one do you wish had not been invented? Are hand-made goods better than factory-made ones? What are the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing? What are the advantages and disadvantages of asking for components just in time? What are the advantages and disadvantages of lean production? What are the advantages and disadvantages of brand name products, own brands and generics? How can total quality management, continuous improvement, benchmarking and business process re-engineering be used for the enhancement of work efficiency? Can a poor product be made successful by clever marketing techniques? Can you think of any examples? Discuss it with the 4Ps and market orientation. Which types of shops do you use to buy different things? Why? What does an advertising agency do? What advertising campaigns are famous in Pakistan? What are the benefits of business discounts? Why do some businesses offer them to the public? Can you think of some local examples? 3

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

What difficulties do developing countries face in maintaining demand and supply of food? What is the main role of a countrys central bank? Exemplify it with any two famous international banks. Discuss the main mechanism too. What is job satisfaction? What factors are involved in it? What are the ways to speak effectively? What makes you an efficient reader? What is culture? Describe different types of companys cultures. How do people dress at work? Do any companies have dress-down days in Pakistan? What are the advantages and disadvantages of how people dress? What is plastic money? What is its future? Why do we sleep What are the effects of prolonged steroid use on the human body How will trains, LRT, and monorail change life in Karachi? How is bulletproof clothing made? How has airport security intensified since September 11th, 2001 globally? How does tobacco use affect the human body? How do computer viruses spread and in what ways do they affect computers? How has the music industry been affected by the internet and digital downloading? What efforts are being taken to protect endangered wildlife? How is text messaging affecting teen literacy? How was the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan plotted and executed? What ingredients can be found inside of a pizza and how it is made? What steps are involved in creating a movie or television show? How does a shark hunt? Do states that allow citizens to carry guns have higher or lower crime rates? How does the human brain store and retrieve memories? What causes tornadoes? What are the dangers and hazards of the nuclear power? How did Genghis Khan conquer Persia? From where does spam email come and can we stop it? How are the Chinese and American economies similar and different? In what ways do video games affect children and teenagers? What are the risks of climate change and global warming? Do the detector tests accurately determine truthful statements? What treatments are available to people infected with cancer and are they effective?

Article Assignment Sample One: Which is the most important invention in the last 100 years? Which one do you wish had not been invented? Sabih-uz-Zaman Farooqui One might wonder at the marvels of science and its applications in the modern world. Dealing with the topic of most important invention in the last 100 years is a conundrum in itself. Computers have played an integral role in the development of science and have opened doors for human achievements, airplanes have decreased the travel times significantly and brought distant places closer, telephone has eradicated the need for letters but what is most important?

The answer to this brainteaser is the Transistor. A small electronic component that has not only given birth to all the modern electronic gadgetry that exists today but has revolutionized the whole meaning of invention. Ubiquitous in every modern electronic device, it was first made in 1960 at Bell Labs after an observation by a group of scientists that applying small currents to a crystal of semiconductor yields a significantly greater output of power. Primitively valves were used to control switching in electrical circuits which consumed high amounts of electrical energy, were very slow and required enormous volumes of space and malfunctioned intermittently. LCROSS to moon, GPS navigation all have computers as their basic component and what controls the computers is the microprocessor which can be made up of as many as 1.7 billion transistors. According to a statistic carried out in 2002; there were 60 million transistors for every person on earth! And this number, in 2010, will rise to almost 1 billion. Considering the most important invention, we may also think of the one which we wish had not been created. Many of the modern creations have proved themselves a bane for man rather than a boon; one such example that can be taken into account is that of the Nuclear Bomb. Although built for the defense of ones country, it has proved its offensive power when the first war detonation took place at Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII. Tsar bomb of Russia is the most powerful bomb ever detonated with a blast yield of 50 megatons of TNT and a fireball measuring 8km in diameter. These bombs not only have the ability to cause a nuclear holocaust but also to release so much radiation that any chances of future survival of human race in the affected area can seem impossible. Opting for the safe existence of human race not only requires new inventions but also a check on their potential hazards. Article Assignment Sample Two:

Are factory made goods better than handmade ones? Mohammad Bilal Karamally Goods either made from hand or at a factory both have their advantages and disadvantages .We shall first talk about goods made by hand before moving to good made at a factory. For centuries, before the invention of machinery we have had almost all sorts of goods made by hand and they were the finest till date. Those goods were of a very high quality made with great precision that reflected the skills and efforts of the hand behind its makings. These days hand made things are highly treasured and considered a collectors item, from furniture crafting to vehicle building, clothing to the cane chair we use to relax in our homes and how can we forget the truck art of our country that is greatly recognized around the world. The invention of machinery saw a great depletion in the work force of these craftsmen as now no one takes into consideration the minute detail which would take a lot of time and labor which meant more money into something that could be made by machine in a matter of hours and minutes, at half the cost. Garment factories have seen an increase in output by the thousands every day that are packed and shipped to be sold to consumers around the world. Cars are built by the dozens in factories and many such things have seen an increase in output that once would take ages to be built by hand. The industrial revolution of 1600 in Great Britain changed everything. Millions of workers were replaced by machines. Many factories saw a 200% output of their raw materials used. Everything now days are done by machines in factories from packing the milk cartons to fixing the wind screen of a new convertible. Every day we witness a new building coming up in our neighborhood, that would generally take years of planning compared to the wonders of the world such as the great pyramids at Egypt, the modern day creations such as the Sears Tower in Chicago or The Petronas Tower in Malaysia both roughly took less than two years with the help of machinery. But the draw backs were also huge. Over the 5

decades large pay cut and reduction of work force were seen. No single person was to be blamed for a manufacturing defect in case such an event occurred. If one unit would fail to function properly the following units would be helpless to cover up for it besides the accuracy. In conclusion we can say that the hand made goods are matchless for their exclusivity, their finesse and their durability. However , in todays day and age of increased demand ,shortage of time for supply of goods and need for cheaper goods it is imperative that we will continue to see an increase in the demand for factory made goods in the world.