Undergraduate - UnitAMU3858 - Writing experiments

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2015 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

print version

6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered.

Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Arts
Organisational Unit	School of Arts and Social Sciences, Malaysia
Offered	Malaysia Second semester 2015 (Day)
Coordinator(s)	Associate Professor Sharon A Bong

Synopsis

This unit approaches creative writing in terms of its status as a product of processes of experimentation (as distinct from personal expression). Students will explore a range of strategies for experimenting with forms and with themes through weekly exercises, investigations into theories from inter-disciplinary fields of study (e.g. communication, literary, film, gender/queer studies, etc), and contextualised in varied social-political and cultural contexts. The major composition that is built on weekly exercises has a thematic focus that is student-driven and demonstrates the processes of researching, drafting and editing creative texts. The unit is oriented towards practical and critical application of advanced experimental strategies and thus emphasises the importance of research into literary, non-literary, fictional, non-fictional texts so that students can better appreciate the extent of originality of style and content of their work in relation to that of published authors. The unit is also oriented towards the production of effective and experimental writing, and the importance of reflecting on creative work through the critical techniques of exegesis.

Outcomes

On successful completion of the unit students will have:

An ability to experiment with a range of writing structures and techniques, and to assess these writing strategies in terms of their effectiveness and creativeness;
Skills in researching and critically reflecting on writing projects, and an appreciation of the importance of the research and exegetical stages in the creative writing processes;
Skills in editing, proofing and preparation of copy for publication; advanced writing and reading skills as a member of an Internet writing group; and
A dossier of research, ideas for writing and examples of drafts and finished work at the end of the unit.

Assessment

Within semester assessment: 100%

Workload requirements

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. A unit requires on average three/four hours of scheduled activities per week. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.