Academic English I

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of the course, students are expected to be able to: organize ideas and write paragraphs, reports, and essays of varied genres/rhetorical styles; apply the conventions of APA referencing in their writing, and quote, paraphrase/summarize texts correctly; apply reading skills such as skimming and scanning to look for main and subordinate ideas of assigned texts, and evaluate reading texts critically; create, conduct and present the findings of a survey, create and give academic/professional presentations and participate in class discussions actively; apply grammatical rules, correct usage and style, and use a wide range of academic and general vocabulary in writing and other contexts.

Topics

This course is designed to increase student understanding of academic discourse, both written and spoken, and the ability to produce such discourse, at a certain level, in relation to general and student specific studies. Reading skills, such as skimming and scanning, and dealing with unknown vocabulary, are integrated with the production of various essay types, such as logical division of ideas and comparison-contrast. The course also focuses on the production and performance of professional outputs in the form of MS Power Point presentations in relation to students’ current studies. Language skills are provided by a workshop series for remediation in grammar, syntax and academic lexis acquisition. The course also heavily emphasizes other academic skills such as critical thinking, paraphrasing, quoting, summarizing, and referencing. The Academic Word List (AWL) is taught within reading texts to enhance understanding and use of the words as well as through word lists and lexical research websites.

Prerequisite: TOEFL 550 AND TWE 4.0 OR a minimum C pass in GS105 – Pre-Academic English