This yearlong module is designed to expose students to text-types (spoken and written) which they will meet during their undergraduate program and to develop their ability to understand and critically engage with these texts. It will improve students’ capacity to produce the key spoken and written genres expected of undergraduates in their discipline. It also aims to raise students’ language proficiency to CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) B2+ level.
a. recognize main themes and understand key details of texts (written or spoken) related to their disciplinary studies and critically engage with these texts. b. produce clearly structured academic writing on discipline-specific subjects with appropriate levels of grammatical accuracy and complexity and showing appropriate accuracy and range of lexis. c. engage in oral presentations and discussions on discipline-specific subjects with attention to academic register (where required) and structure and with an appropriate range of grammatical and lexical features and appropriate levels of oral fluency and accuracy. d. incorporate information into their writing or oral presentations ethically and in accordance with referencing and citation conventions, clearly distinguishing between their own ideas and the intellectual property of others.
Students will be expected to actively participate in seminar activities and learning tasks, either individually or in groups. Tasks will frequently involve discussion and analysis of both the language and ideas in prescribed texts (spoken or written). Students will often be expected to read these texts independently as preparation for seminars. Texts and some activities will be completed online. Speaking coursework assessments may be completed during class time.