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ENG101 ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES I

Course Objectives

English for Academic Purposes I is an introductory course that aims to equip students with the basics of reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills that are essential for academic life. Following a discovery learning and student-centered approach, the course is designed to help students gain insight into text organization, APA style for referencing, idea development, cohesion and coherence, style, and register of any given academic source, as well as prompt analysis and formulating a response in line with the given prompt. In conjunction with a focus on academic conventions and style, the course also intends to develop the students’ critical thinking skills, encouraging critical evaluation and the use of higher-order thinking skills. To this end, the ideas in the given sources will be analyzed and later be used by students extensively in their writing to formulate an argument and support ideas, as well as in their class discussions to employ sound reasoning and effectively articulate opinions by reacting and referring to the arguments in oral discourse. Typical classwork of ENG 101 contains analysis of texts and videos, discussion sessions, and individual writing assignments.

The overall aim of this course is to develop students in all four skills, namely reading, listening, writing, and speaking, for academic purposes and to enhance learner autonomy so that students can transfer these skills to their departmental undergraduate and postgraduate courses and professional lives.

Course Content

The course reinforces academic reading skills (finding the main idea, skimming, scanning, inferring information, guessing vocabulary from context, etc.) through reading selections on a variety of topics. It also aims at developing critical thinking, which enables students to respond to the ideas in a well organized written format. Other reading related writing skills such as paraphrasing and summarizing are also dealt with.

Course Learning Outcomes

The following skills are the learning outcomes of this course:

READING

Students will practice smart reading skills to:

• comprehend texts fully (identifying main/supporting ideas, identifying tone, purpose, and audience, recognizing patterns of organization and cohesive devices, guessing meaning from context, text annotation)
• critically evaluate texts by identifying inferred meanings, arguments, and attitudes, thereby making critical judgments
• use texts as support in writing by evaluating and synthesizing information from multiple texts

LISTENING

Students will practice while listening and note-taking:

• for specific purposes
• to identify main ideas, supporting ideas/details, as well as implied ideas
• to recognize the relationship between a recording/video and a reading text
• to reflect on and react to ideas in a recording/video
• to evaluate ideas in a recording/video to use them as support in their own writing

WRITING

Students will:

• analyze sample academic texts to distinguish features of academic writing
• analyze writing prompts and produce relevant responses that address a given prompt fully
• write coherent, logical, organized, and well-developed extended paragraphs free from logical fallacies
• identify relevant information from different texts to synthesize them by paraphrasing, summarizing, and quoting directly
• incorporate citations accurately and effectively in writing and give correct references in APA style

SPEAKING 

Students will practice communicating effectively in academic contexts by:

• participating in whole class/group discussions to express and justify their opinions
• reacting to different ideas to agree/disagree/refute/justify
• analyzing and synthesizing information from different sources to justify their opinions