NTU Sociology module reviews: HS1001, HS1002, HS1003
Note: I took these modules in AY22/23, there is a chance that things have since changed.
(Ctrl+F to skip to the mods you’re looking for :-D)
HS1001 Person and Society
Course Type: Major Core, 3AU Course Coordinator/ lecturer: Associate Professor Shirly Sun When I took it: Y1S1, AY2022-2023 Assessment structure:
Class participation - 10%
Group in-tutorial presentation - 20%
Term paper - 30% (Due: Week 13)
Finals (essay-based) - 40%
TL;DR:
Not hard, not easy. Attending lectures is important. Readings can be overwhelming, don't waste too much time on the longer, traditional texts; skim those readings for key concepts and useful case studies which will come in handy for finals. For the presentations, be concise. For the term paper, do A LOT of research and planning.
What is this mod about?
This module is an introduction to Sociology. Accordingly, it goes through Sociology’s basic concepts, the major schools of thought/ theories in the field, and some of the major social phenomena that shape our lives today.
Overall,
This module is relatively manageable and really quite interesting. The main concepts across the mod are not hard to grasp. This is mainly because the module's textbook, The Practical Skeptic (McIntyre, Lisa. 2020) is very accessible for people with no background knowledge.
Attending lectures is important:
They go through useful concepts that are not really covered elsewhere in the course and the lecture slides alone are not sufficient to fully understand what was taught in lecture.
There were a number of documentary screenings during lectures over the sem. Info from the documentaries will be useful for finals, attending lectures will let you know which parts of the documentaries you need to pay attention to.
Prof Shirly is very kind.
Tutorials and tutorial presentations:
Courtesy of the wonderful graduate TA that helmed tutorials when I took this mod (Ms. Raksha Kirpal Mahtani), tutorials were, at once, productive and low-pressure.
Tutorial presentations: Most sociology mods seem to have a tutorial presentation component. At the beginning of the semester, students will be assigned to a particular week and they would then have to prepare a presentation (and usually facilitate discussion for) the week’s readings. Here, being concise is key, do not be afraid to cut out large parts of the readings for your presentation.
Though, the readings outside the textbook can be overwhelming:
There are a few readings from the ~19th Century that can be tricky to navigate (vis-à-vis old fashioned academic language). These are classic works in sociology by the field's founding fathers (Marx, Weber, Durkheim). But, fret not, the concepts covered in these readings are also covered in the textbook in a more digestible form. So, do not make the mistake of spending too much time deciphering these classic readings.
And there are a few other quite lengthy, info-overload papers. Be selective in identifying which parts to pay attention to and which parts to skim over.
Term paper:
Involved writing about a social issue of your choice that fell into one of 3 broad categories (racial profiling, gender discrimination or class inequality).
This will probably be one of sociology students' first experiences with academic writing. Don't be too intimidated, the syllabus lays out a clear structure to follow in writing this paper.
I intend on writing a more comprehensive guide to academic writing but for now, to do well for this essay, I suggest you do a lot of research on your chosen issue and the sociological concepts you intend on using in the paper (and make a plan before you start writing!).
Finals (essay-based):
Even though the content was relatively easy to understand, there was a lot of it.
Understanding the broad concepts and processes in the mod is, of course, the most important thing to do.
Secondary to that is cherry picking case studies/examples from the readings to supplement your answers.
HS1002 Singapore Society in Transition
Course Type: Major Prescribed Elective (compulsory), 3AU Course Coordinator, Lecturer: Assistant Prof Ye Junjia When I took it: Y1S1, AY2022-2023 Assessment structure:
Class participation - 15%
Group in-tutorial presentation - 15%
Term paper - 30% (Due: Week 7)
Finals (essay-based) - 40%
TL;DR: Again, not hard, not easy and attending lectures is important. For tutorial presentations, focus on facilitating discussion rather than summarising content. Don’t be intimidated by the term paper, as long as you nail the basic elements of a paper, you can do well. For finals, keep in mind the main theme of the course ‘transition’
What is this mod about?
This mod is a sociological overview of Singapore: its history, how it is today, and how it might be in the future. Specifically, the mod explores how SG has been governed and how that has shaped its society. Some topics include: gender & family; race & ethnicity; public space; civil society; migration.
Once again, attending lectures is important:
I found that lectures went through the core, most important ideas which were supplemented by the readings. Lecture content gives you the necessary framework to understand the readings and clues you in as to which parts of the readings are most important
Also, the lecture slides are pretty bare bones. They won’t be too useful to you if you don’t attend the lecture.
Readings:
Compared to HS1001, I found that HS1002 had a heavier reading load. Though, most of them are easy enough to grasp.
Again, readings will provide you with a lot of supplemental information; do not attempt to memorise everything, pick out several key examples when studying for finals.
Some readings will introduce other concepts that weren’t really covered in lectures. In my experience, I don’t think that these are too important, I think that you can do well in finals without them. Instead, use the readings to build on the core ideas from lectures.
Tutorials and tutorial presentations:
Tutorials revolved around student presentations. In my tutorial group, we didn’t do anything other than listen to student presentations and engage with their discussion questions
Prof Jia emphasised that the presentations should mainly be about on facilitating discussion (as opposed to being a regurgitation of the readings by students). However, it played out very differently in my tutorial group. The presentations essentially became ~30 min lectures with some breaks for discussion questions. I think what happened was: early presenters focused on regurgitating content and everybody else was subsequently pressured into doing the same. As a result, the presentation became a rather demanding.
That said, I think that essentialising your presentation’s content and focusing on facilitating discussion (via discussion questions, debates, Kahoot, etc) is for the best, even if everyone else seems to be doing presentations deep diving into the readings. Your presentation will be far more engaging and a lot less onerous to prepare for.
Term paper:
HS1002′s term paper was due mid-semester, which is a bit out of the ordinary but not a bad thing, you’ll likely be juggling several other deadlines towards the end of the semester. So, this paper was the very first experience with academic writing for many soci Year 1s.
Accordingly, there was an (ungraded) abstract that you had to submit before the paper. This was probably just for the TAs to make sure you were on the right track. This is a good opportunity to get some feedback on your paper so take this seriously, even though it is ungraded.
The topic for the paper is very broad -- any issue related to Singapore, essentially. This meant that I had difficulty deciding on a topic/research question. My advice: don’t waste too much time trying to think of a unique or impressive area of study, it’s fine to write about a generic topic.
Also, given that almost everyone will be new to academic writing, it won’t be hard to do well in this paper. Getting the baiscs of writing a paper correct will be enough for a good grade (i.e. Organised structure; a research question/argument; coherent writing; proper citating and formatting).
Finals:
Take direction from the core concepts from lectures in your revision. Do not blindly memorise content from the readings.
Do not study the weekly topics in isolation, think about how they interact. This will be crucial for finals. And relatedly, think about the main theme of the course ‘Singapore society in TRANSITION’ -- how has society transitioned/changed?
I found it helpful to put together a short timeline of major developments in SG’s history with info from lectures and various readings.
Dust off your exam taking skills and try to craft some essay questions and attempt to answer them.
Some thoughts from myself:
I really enjoyed this mod. Not only is Prof Jia a wonderfully engaging speaker, the content content of the mod was very eye opening; it called into question a lot of the taken-for-granted beliefs that we might have about SG. I feel like I have a more holistic understanding of SG society now.
HS1003 Social problems in a global context
Course Type: Major Prescribed Elective, 3AU Course Coordinator, Lecturer: Assoc. Professor Sulfikar Amir When I took it: Y1S2, AY2022-2023 Assessment structure:
Class participation - 10%
Group in-tutorial presentation - 20%
Term paper - 30% (Due: Week 13)
Finals (essay-based) - 40%
TL;DR: The presentation/essay assignments were pretty demanding (if you wanted to do well, anyway). The mod’s content is not difficult to comprehend, finals were relatively manageable. The topics from the first few weeks are especially important. If you’re aiming for an A+, thorough knowledge of the readings is necessary, with regards to finals. Otherwise, understanding lecture content, its broad concepts, is all you need to do decently for finals.
What is this mod about?
Contemporary globalisation is the central theme in this mod. Each week typically looks at a set of social problems and how they relate to/are created by globalisation. Some topics include: crime; poverty and inequality; technology; war.
Lectures
And once again, attending lectures is important. But probably more important for this mod than others. Prof Amir has a few ‘whiteboard style’ lectures. That is to say, a lecture comprised of mostly verbal communication and some mind-mapping-type drawing on the whiteboards with very minimal slides. You will be completely lost without attending lectures.
The first few topics covered in the mod are particularly important.
They are broad, foundational concepts that are the mainstays of the rest of the mod’s content (e.g. social structures, global division of labor, neoliberalism). So, make sure to establish a strong understanding of these topics early on. These should be the first topics you revise in your preparation for finals.
Readings and finals
With the exception of the first few weeks of content, the readings didn’t seem to be too important in the rest of the mod. However, I was rather blindsided during finals for this mod. without revealing too many details, the exam questions made explicit reference to several readings. This was surprising because we never really went through any of that in lecture or tutorial. Had I known that, I would’ve studied the readings in greater depth.
Tutorials
I just want to say that the TA for my batch was so incredible in all respects. (Thanks for everything, Ming Wei!)
Tutorial presentations and the social problems essay
These are individual and connected assignments. In the presentation, we had to go through the outline of our essays, answer questions from the audience and receive feedback. Like the other mods, we were assigned a topic at the beginning of the semester and had to present and write our essays about the assigned topic.
There is a fairly set structure to the essay: describe your chosen problem, explain the problem with sociological concepts/theories, and link it all back to globalisation. The tricky part of this essay is weaving these 3 parts into a seamless, coherent argument (and you do, in fact, need to have an argument; your essay cannot simply be a description of a social problem)
My advice: read widely in search of the sociological concept(s) you choose to use in your essay; a very common mistake people made was to invoke ‘cOnFliCT thEoRY’ which is probably better described as an overarching paradigm in sociology rather than a theory.
Regarding the presentation, I can’t speak for future batches, this might depend on your TA, but in my experience, presentation skills did not seem to matter as much as the content of your presentation. It was alright to read off a script, to have not-so-pretty slides.
More importantly, the presentation is a fantastic opportunity to get feedback on your essay. So, even if you were unlucky enough to be assigned a week 3 presentation slot, take this very seriously.
On a final note, this presentation and essay were the most difficult and demanding assignments I did that semester. Though, they were also the most rewarding. I’m quite proud of the essay I ultimately produced and I think the process of researching for and writing this essay really upgraded my writing skills.