High-Intermediate Writing and Grammar

Course Description

High-Intermediate Writing and Grammar develops academic writing at the paragraph-to-essay transition together with the grammatical control that academic writing requires — sentence structure beyond the simple sentence, verb tense and aspect used consistently across extended text, and the accuracy expected in submitted academic work.

Within the SCNS taxonomy, EAP is the English for Academic Purposes prefix. Daytona State publishes this course at 6 credits, and the C suffix marks a combined lecture-and-laboratory format. At the C-suffixed EAP convention of 20 contact hours per credit, that is approximately 120 contact hours — a very substantial course. It appears at approximately three Florida institutions.

Combining writing and grammar in one course is deliberate and pedagogically sound: grammar taught in isolation transfers poorly to writing, and writing taught without grammatical attention leaves errors to fossilize. The integration is the point.

⚠ This is a 6-credit course — plan for it accordingly

Stated prominently because it is the single most consequential practical fact about this course, and students assume otherwise.

Every other EAP course in this repository is 3 credits. This one is 6, as is EAP1685 (Advanced Writing and Grammar). At approximately 120 contact hours, it carries the classroom time of two ordinary courses.

What follows from that:

• It occupies a double slot in your schedule, and the out-of-class workload scales with it. Treat it as two courses when planning your term.
• It costs the tuition of 6 credits, which matters against financial aid limits and against any cap on how many EAP hours can be funded or applied.
• It reflects intensive English programme design. Institutions with structured IEPs build the writing-and-grammar core as a large integrated block rather than as separate small courses, because that is how language proficiency actually develops — through sustained daily contact, not through three hours a week.
• Transfer of a 6-credit EAP course is unusually unpredictable. A receiving institution whose own equivalent is 3 credits has no clean mapping, and re-placement by local assessment is the likely outcome.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Write unified, coherent, adequately developed academic paragraphs.
• Write a multi-paragraph essay with a clear thesis, developed body, and conclusion.
• Apply the stages of the writing process: planning, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading.
• Develop ideas with specific support: examples, detail, reasons, and evidence.
• Organize writing using recognized rhetorical patterns, including narration, description, comparison, cause and effect, and process.
• Use transitions and cohesive devices to connect ideas within and across paragraphs.
• Construct simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences accurately.
• Use adjective, adverb, and noun clauses correctly.
• Apply verb tense and aspect accurately and maintain consistency across a text.
• Use modal verbs accurately to express ability, obligation, possibility, and degree of certainty.
• Use the passive voice appropriately and recognize where academic writing prefers it.
• Apply article and determiner usage with reasonable accuracy.
• Maintain subject-verb agreement in complex sentence structures.
• Use gerunds and infinitives correctly after common verbs.
• Correct sentence-level errors: fragments, run-ons, and comma splices.
• Apply academic vocabulary appropriate to the level, including Academic Word List items.
• Apply standard mechanics: punctuation, capitalization, and spelling.
• Summarize and paraphrase source material without plagiarizing.
• Edit one's own writing systematically using a personal error inventory.
• Respond productively to instructor and peer feedback.

Optional Outcomes

• Write a basic argumentative essay.
• Incorporate and cite short sources.
• Write under timed examination conditions.
• Use word-processing and reference tools effectively.
• Describe rhetorical differences between English academic writing and other traditions.
• Maintain a reflective writing journal.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• The academic paragraph: unity, coherence, development
• The multi-paragraph essay and thesis statement
• The writing process and revision
• Development and specific support
• Rhetorical patterns of organization
• Transitions and cohesion
• Sentence types and clause structure
• Adjective, adverb, and noun clauses
• Verb tense, aspect, and consistency
• Modal verbs
• Passive voice in academic writing
• Articles and determiners
• Subject-verb agreement in complex structures
• Gerunds and infinitives
• Fragments, run-ons, and comma splices
• Academic vocabulary and the Academic Word List
• Mechanics: punctuation, capitalization, spelling
• Summary, paraphrase, and plagiarism avoidance
• Self-editing and error inventories
• Using feedback

Optional Topics

• Argumentative writing
• Source use and citation
• Timed writing
• Word processing and reference tools
• Contrastive rhetoric
• Reflective journaling

Resources & Tools

• Great Writing (Folse) or the Longman Academic Writing Series — the standard EAP writing texts, both level-graded.
• Understanding and Using English Grammar (Azar & Hagen) — the reference grammar most EAP programmes use; the intermediate Fundamentals volume also serves.
• Purdue OWL (owl.purdue.edu) — free, comprehensive, with an ESL section, and the reference most instructors will point you to.
• Merriam-Webster Learner's Dictionary and the Longman and Oxford learner's dictionaries — free online, written with restricted defining vocabulary, and far more useful to a language learner than a standard dictionary.
• The Academic Word List (Coxhead) — free, and the highest-return vocabulary study available to an academic English learner.
• Corpus tools — COCA (corpus.byu.edu) and SkELL are free and let you check how a word is actually used, including its normal collocations.
• Your institution's writing centre and language lab — free tutoring you have already paid for through fees, and the single most underused resource on any campus.
• Your institution's language lab — the C suffix means laboratory hours are part of the course, not optional.
• Word-processing software with grammar checking — useful as a prompt to look something up, unreliable as an authority.

Career Pathways

EAP is a gateway rather than a destination: it exists to make every other pathway accessible. Its outcomes are therefore about what it unlocks.

• Entry into degree programmes — the immediate purpose, across every discipline the institution offers.
• Professional and licensure programmes — nursing, allied health, education, and business all depend on academic English competence, and several carry their own English requirements.
• Workplace advancement — documented English proficiency changes what roles are accessible in Florida's healthcare, hospitality, logistics, and construction sectors.
• Interpretation and translation — strong bilingualism is a marketable asset in Florida, particularly in healthcare and legal settings, and formal certification pathways exist.
• Teaching English — some EAP completers go on to TESOL credentials; having learned the language as an adult is a genuine professional advantage in that field.
• Bilingual roles generally — Florida's labour market pays a real premium for bilingual capability in customer-facing, healthcare, and public-sector work.

Worth naming plainly: multilingualism is an asset, not a remediation. A student completing an EAP sequence arrives at their degree programme with a skill most of their classmates do not have.

Special Information

⚠ Grammar accuracy and writing fluency develop on different timelines — do not confuse them

The most useful thing a high-intermediate writer can understand about their own progress.

Fluency — the ability to produce extended text with ideas organized — develops faster than accuracy. It is entirely normal to write a well-organized, clearly argued essay that still contains article errors, and this does not mean the writing is bad. It means two different systems are developing at different rates.

What follows practically:

• Separate drafting from editing. Trying to be accurate while composing suppresses fluency and produces short, timid, over-simple writing. Draft for ideas; edit for accuracy afterwards, as a distinct pass.
• Keep a personal error inventory. Your errors are not random — they cluster in a handful of categories predictable from your first language. A student who knows their own top five error types and checks specifically for them improves accuracy far faster than one who edits generally.
• Some errors resist correction longer than others. Articles, prepositions, and aspect are notoriously persistent for speakers of languages that lack the corresponding distinctions, and they persist in the writing of highly proficient users. That is normal and is not evidence of insufficient effort.
• Not all errors cost the same. An error that obscures meaning matters more than one that merely marks the writing as non-native, and editing effort should be allocated accordingly.

⚠ Plagiarism: the rules are cultural as well as legal, and the penalties are severe

An area where international and multilingual students are disproportionately penalized, frequently for reasons that have nothing to do with dishonesty — which is why it belongs in this course rather than being left to a first-year composition class.

What US academic institutions require is specific and not universal. In some educational traditions, reproducing an authority's words without attribution signals respect and mastery; in the US academic context it is a serious offense with penalties running to course failure and dismissal. The rule is that any words or ideas taken from a source must be attributed, and the standard applies regardless of intent.

The particular difficulty for a language learner is real and worth naming: paraphrasing well requires vocabulary range you may not have yet. A student who cannot easily restate an idea in different words is under genuine pressure to reuse the source's phrasing, and "patchwriting" — changing a few words while keeping the sentence structure — is treated as plagiarism at most institutions.

The workable approach: read, put the source away, write from memory in your own words, then check that you have not reproduced the original's structure — and cite the source anyway, because paraphrase requires citation just as quotation does. When you genuinely cannot restate something, quote it accurately and cite it; a quotation is honest, and patchwriting is not.

Note also the current complication: institutional policy on AI writing assistance is in flux, varies by institution and by instructor, and using a tool your instructor prohibits is an academic integrity violation regardless of how helpful it was. Ask; do not assume. Rule 11 applies — verify your institution's current policy.

⚠ EAP credit and your degree: the question to ask before you enroll

The most consequential practical matter in this course, and one students routinely discover too late.

EAP coursework does not function like ordinary college credit at most Florida institutions. Depending on the institution and the specific course, EAP credit may be:

• Institutional credit only — it counts toward enrollment status, financial aid, and academic standing, but not toward the credits required for a degree.
• Elective credit, capped — a limited number of hours may be applied toward a degree, with the remainder not counting.
• Degree-applicable — at some institutions and in some programmes, though this is the least common arrangement.

Three consequences follow, and each has cost students real money:

• Financial aid has limits. Federal aid restricts the number of remedial or preparatory credit hours it will fund, and satisfactory academic progress is measured against attempted hours whether or not they count toward a degree.
• Florida's excess credit hour surcharge applies to state university students who attempt substantially more hours than their degree requires. How preparatory hours are treated under that policy matters, and the treatment is not uniform.
• Transfer is not automatic. EAP credit accepted at one institution may not be accepted at the next, and a receiving institution may re-place you by its own assessment regardless of what you completed.

Ask your advisor, in writing, three questions before you register: does this course count toward my degree, does it count toward financial aid enrollment, and how many EAP hours may I take before hitting a limit. Rule 11 applies — state aid rules and institutional policy change; verify current provisions rather than relying on this or any other guide.

⚠ Placement, exit, and the concurrent-enrollment question

EAP sequences are placement-driven. You do not choose your level; an assessment does — typically an institutional placement instrument, sometimes in combination with TOEFL, IELTS, or Duolingo English Test scores. Placement instruments vary by institution, which is part of why EAP transfer is unreliable.

Points worth knowing:

• Exit is usually by demonstrated proficiency, not by seat time. Passing the course and exiting the level can be separate determinations, and some institutions require an exit assessment.
• You may repeat a level, and repeating is common and not a mark against you — but repeats consume financial aid and count as attempted hours.
• Ask whether you can take degree coursework concurrently. Some institutions permit students at higher EAP levels to enroll in credit courses simultaneously; others require completion of the sequence first. This single question can shorten your path by a full term or more.
• Skipping a level is sometimes possible by challenge assessment. Ask; the worst outcome is being told no.

⚠ Only about three Florida institutions carry this number — hedge accordingly

This course appears at roughly three institutions statewide. Content, credit value, and emphasis vary more than they would for a widely taught course. Read your own institution's catalog description and syllabus rather than assuming this guide describes your section exactly, and have any transfer evaluated in writing.

Course format and transfer

EAP1585C is 6 credits and approximately 120 contact hours under the C-suffixed EAP convention of 20 hours per credit. The C suffix denotes a combined lecture and laboratory format, so language-lab or writing-lab hours are a required part of the course rather than an optional support.

Expect frequent graded writing with revision — the revision cycle is the instructional method, not an add-on — along with grammar assessment and, commonly, a portfolio or timed exit essay. Attendance requirements in intensive programmes are typically strict, because the model depends on sustained daily contact.

How Florida course levels affect transfer

The first digit of an SCNS number denotes the year of offering, not transferability. Courses at the 1000 and 2000 levels transfer transparently between Florida public institutions, and 3000 to 4000 is unproblematic since both are upper division. The boundary that actually matters is 2000 to 3000, where lower-division credit generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement.

Two transfer notes specific to this course. The 6-credit value has no clean equivalent at institutions whose EAP writing courses are 3 credits, so expect re-placement by local assessment rather than credit-for-credit transfer. And confirm with an advisor in writing whether these 6 credits count toward your degree, toward financial aid enrollment, or toward neither — at 6 credits the answer has twice the financial consequence it would otherwise.