Reading for Writing, Writing for Reading

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 4
• Convenor: Dr Agnes Woolley
• Assessment: a continuous writing assessment - ten 400-word in-class assignments (100%)

This module is about what it means to be a reader and a writer. The first part of the module focuses on close reading and the second on practical writing.

Studying a diverse range of poems, you will learn how to analyse the various tools writers use to persuade, challenge and move their readers. You will then develop your interpretations of literature through writing about it. Every week you will try out different writing techniques, building a regular writing practice. You will gain an understanding of key concepts including:

• writing as thinking
• structures
• voice
• argument
• connection
• persuasion
• dialogue
• devices
• revising and redrafting

The skills of interpretation and expression that you develop here will serve as a foundation for the rest of your degree, making you a more reflective and rigorous reader, and a more confident and effective writer.

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• foster advanced close-reading skills by identifying and analysing aesthetic features and verbal creativity in poetry as well as in critical essays, newspaper articles, blogs and political speeches
• develop expertise in clear, persuasive writing by focusing on a different feature and receiving feedback each week
• build academic confidence through understanding your language as a tool which you can manipulate in different ways.