English for Effective Communication I: Reading and Writing

This Course Guide has been taken from the most recent presentation of the course. It would be useful for reference purposes but please note that there may be updates for the following presentation.

ENGL 1120EED

English for Effective Communication I: Listening and Speaking

Introduction

ENGL 1120EED English for Effective Communication I: Reading and Writing is a 3-credit-unit, post-secondary education foundation course. It is intended for students who plan to continue their education at the tertiary level through the medium of English.

Excluded combination

This course forms an excluded combination with ENGL 1100EED; ENGL 1100EEF; ENGL 1101EEF and ENGL 1102EEF under the three-credit- unit system.

Course aims

The course aims to promote effective communication by developing students' reading and writing competencies. It seeks to:

equip students with the grammatical and vocabulary knowledge required for effective communication; and
enhance students' English proficiency in reading and writing for academic, social and work purposes.

Course learning outcomes

Upon completion of this course, students should be able to:

apply different reading skills to comprehend a text effectively;
use appropriate grammar, syntactic structures and vocabulary to express ideas in written communication; and
produce written texts in a clear and well-structured manner with appropriate register, tone and style.

Course content

Topics		No. of study weeks
Unit 1	Foundation skills in reading and writing Grammatical foundations of reading and writing • Simple sentences and complex sentences • Contrast • Conditionals • Modality • Clauses and phrases • Ways of giving emphasis Analysing and constructing texts (1) • Purposes in writing • Elements of texts • The stages of writing • Preparing to write an essay Analysing and constructing texts (2) • Opening sentences • Choosing an opening • Closing sentences • Good paragraphs • Coherence and cohesion • Writing and revising a short essay	3 weeks
Unit 2	Reading and writing for social and persuasive purposes Lexical foundations of reading and writing • Use of dictionaries and thesauruses • Guessing the meaning of words • Learning new words • Vocabulary choice Techniques and styles of persuasive writing • The language of advertising • Newspapers	3 weeks
Unit 3	Academic reading and writing (I) Reading and writing skills for academic study • Reviewing the contents of a book • Developing skimming and scanning skills • Effective note taking • Summarising and paraphrasing • Citing sources • Avoiding plagiarism • Integrating references into texts • Writing a reference list • Attributing and commenting on ideas Writing reports • An illustrative example • Types of report • Analysing language features of a report	3 weeks
Unit 4	Academic reading and writing (II) Distinguishing fact and opinion in reading • Recognising a writer's point of view Understanding different viewpoints in reading • Comparing two texts • Responding personally to texts Writing an academic essay • An overview of the writing process • Planning, evaluating, editing and revising an essay	3 weeks
Unit 5	Reading and writing in the workplace Preparing for job applications • Job advertisements • Writing a curriculum vitae • Writing job application letters: Organisation and content • Writing job application letters: Using language effectively Written communication in the workplace • Emails and 'netiquette' • Reports • Further practice activities	3 weeks
	Revision	1 week
	Total	16 weeks

Alignment of learning outcomes and course content

Learning outcome	Units
1	1−2
2	1−5
3	1−5

Teaching and learning

ENGL 1120EED is a distance learning course. Students are expected to engage in independent learning through the course materials. There are seven two-hour tutorials to be conducted at regular intervals throughout the course. They are intended to supplement what has been studied in the units. They also provide the conditions for developing a community whose aims are to support independent learning efforts, collaboratively find answers to questions or problems, and generally motivate learning. For this reason, students are strongly encouraged to attend tutorials.

Online support

Students are offered the option of additional online communication through the University's Online Learning Environment (OLE), which serves as a platform for communication among students, tutors and the Course Coordinator. Students are also provided with useful web-links as additional resources to consolidate their learning.

Assessment

There are two assessment components in this course: assignments and a final examination.

Assignments

There are three written assignments for continuous assessment purposes in this course. They account for 40% of the final course grade.

Assignment 1 (12%): Completing a language task, analysing a text and writing a summary, and writing a product advertisement
Assignment 2 (14%): Writing an essay
Assignment 3 (14%): Writing a report

Final examination

The examination at the end of ENGL 1120EED, which lasts for two hours and a half, accounts for 60% of the total mark for the course.

Part I has three sections — Section A consists of questions relating to reading comprehension, Section B is a proofreading test which requires students to identify and correct grammatical problems in a passage, and Section C is a gap-filling exercise which assesses students' grammatical knowledge.
Part II involves an assessment task which requires students to demonstrate their writing competencies. They are required to write a coherent text using appropriate vocabulary, a wide range of syntactic structures and accurate grammar.

Alignment of assessment items and learning outcomes

Assessment item	Learning outcomes
Assessment item	1	2	3
Assignment 1	Ö	Ö	Ö
Assignment 2		Ö	Ö
Assignment 3		Ö	Ö
Examination	Ö	Ö	Ö

Course materials

Students taking ENGL 1120EED are provided with a Course Guide, five study units, a set of readings collected in The Penguin Modern English Language Reader and assignment files. There is no set text for the course.

Recommended reference books

Brannan, B (2003) A Writer's Workshop: Crafting Paragraphs, Building Essays, McGraw-Hill.

Bruce, I (2011) Theory and Concepts of English for Academic Purposes, Palgrave Macmillan.

Carter, R and McCarthy, M (2006) Cambridge Grammar of English, Cambridge University Press.

Henderson, E (2012) The Active Reader: Strategies for Academic Reading and Writing, Oxford University Press.

Osmond, A (2016) Academic Writing and Grammar for Students, SAGE.

Swan, E (2005) Practical English Usage, 3rd edn, Oxford University Press.

Related online resources

BBC Learning English: https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish

Cambridge Dictionary: https://dictionary.cambridge.org

EAP Foundation: https://www.eapfoundation.com

Online Oxford Collocation Dictionary: https://www.freecollocation.com

Oxford English Dictionary: https://www.oed.com

Purdue University Online Writing Lab: https://owl.purdue.edu