Learning Outcomes

Academic writing developmentBy the end of this module, the student should be able to:Show an increasing awareness of and ability in organising ideas at paragraph and whole text level Show an increasing awareness of and control in using a reasonable range of skills and strategies for writing academic texts e.g. scientific report writing Complete a piece of reasonably complex coursework (e.g. report) using the writing process, adapting in response to feedback Use a reasonable range of vocabulary and sentence structure, incorporating complexity and simplicity as appropriate for Upper Intermediate level English Show an increasing awareness of plagiarism, and ability in avoiding it through appropriate referencing, summarising and paraphrasing Academic reading developmentBy the end of the course, students should be able to:Show a reasonable ability to distinguish between a range of information sources, and their relevance / reliability for academic purposes React to adapted text by giving opinion and starting to demonstrate criticality, achieving this to a more limited extent with authentic texts; Demonstrate note?taking skills of main ideas and some detail Show reasonable ability in summarizing and paraphrasing simple/adapted texts consistent with Upper Intermediate level Academic speaking developmentBy the end of the course, students should be able to:Use the spoken language with a degree of fluency and appropriateness for academic contexts e.g. seminars and oral presentation, and communicating with tutors/lecturers about coursework; Give detailed descriptions on a range of subjects; Give a short academic presentation on their subject area; Employ a range of rhetorical functions such as developing an argument with some highlighting of points and detail within the context of oral presentation or seminar or in discussions with lecturers Academic listening developmentBy the end of the course, students should be able to:Understand main points of lectures, talks and reports and other forms of academic presentation spoken in dialects and accents likely to be encountered in social or academic life; Follow the organisation of a talk, distinguishing between different levels of relevancy and detail (e.g. digression and anecdote) Identify some speaker viewpoints and attitudes and understand a range of rhetorical functions; Respond appropriately and show awareness of criticality i.e. distinguishing between hypothesis and fact; giving opinion; Use effective note?taking skills: recognising complex discourse markers that signal explicit and implicit information.