University English: Listening and Speaking

Welcome to ENGL 1202EED University English: Listening and Speaking.

ENGL 1202EED is a distance-learning, one-term, 3-credit-unit English proficiency course designed for programmes offered by the School of Education and Languages, focusing on developing your listening and speaking skills in social, academic and work contexts. This course, which seeks to integrate listening and speaking skills, is structured around some of the main functions of language.

Before you begin to study the course content, you need to understand how ENGL 1202EED operates, what the course covers, and how its various parts fit together. You will find the answers to these questions in this Course Guide. Please read it thoroughly now and refer to it while you are studying the course.

Course aims

ENGL 1202EED aims to help you:

• enhance the accuracy and fluency of your spoken English in different settings;
• improve your English listening proficiency in various contexts;
• develop your listening and speaking skills for social, academic and work purposes;
• communicate effectively using appropriate verbal and non-verbal skills; and
• advance your critical thinking skills and express your opinions persuasively in English.

Course learning outcomes

Upon the completion of ENGL 1202EED, you should be able to:

• use accurate pronunciation and appropriate features of connected speech to effectively express ideas in English;
• identify phonetic and discursive features for effective English communication;
• present ideas with appropriate and coherent development for daily, academic and workplace communication;
• summarise arguments and interpret ideas and opinions in different contexts of English communication; and
• deliver effective oral presentations for different communicative purposes.

The following table provides an overview of the course and suggests the amount of time to allow for completing each unit.

As you will have your own pace of study, however, this schedule is only a guide. You can adjust it to fit your personal needs more closely.

The estimated time that you need to spend on this course, on average, is eight hours per week, although this will vary depending on your proficiency in English. This estimate includes time for reading the study units and carrying out the practice activities in them, listening to/watching the audio-visual materials, completing your assignments, reviewing the study materials, attending the tutorials, and preparing for your final examination.

ENGL 1202EED consists of this Course Guide, five study units, and assignments, all of which are provided by HKMU.

Course Guide

The Course Guide tells you briefly what this course is about, what it contains, and how you can work through it. It also gives you some information about tutorials and assessment.

Study units

As you saw in the Course overview, ENGL 1202EED contains five study units:

• Unit 1 deals with the basic linguistic concepts found in phonetics and phonology.
• Unit 2 considers general listening skills.
• Unit 3 focuses on listening and speaking skills that you can apply to your daily communication.
• Unit 4 is concerned primarily with listening and speaking skills that are useful in academic contexts.
• Unit 5 is concerned primarily with listening and speaking skills that are useful in the workplace.

Each unit includes specific objectives, as well as a very wide range of practice activities, to help you improve your English listening and speaking skills.

Recommended books

There is no set textbook for ENGL 1202EED. You will, however, be encouraged to read the recommended references and supplementary readings that are included at the end of the study units.

Audio-visual material

Frequent audio and video-based activities will be included in this course.

You will also be required to refer to the Online Learning Environment (OLE) and relevant websites.

Assignment File

The Assignment File, which is available on the OLE, gives you details of what is required in your assignments, their due dates, how many marks each is worth, and how each will be graded. Assignments must reach your tutor on or before the due date. Please read the Student Handbook for the University's policy on late assignments.

Your tutor

Before the course starts you will be advised by the HKMU Registry of the name, address and phone number of your tutor. Your tutor will:

• conduct tutorials for your group;
• assess and comment on your assignments; and
• be available at certain times to help you by phone. (You will be advised of these times separately.)

Your tutor is your first point of contact with HKMU. Please consult him/her first if you face any problems. Your tutor will advise you if you need to contact the Course Coordinator.

Please note that it is not your tutor's role to give lectures on the course material. His/Her job is to assist you when you run into difficulties and to arrange opportunities for you to put into practice some of the course concepts. HKMU encourages you strongly to make use of this assistance.

Tutorials

There are 14 hours of face-to-face tutorials. The times, dates and locations of the tutorial sessions will be sent to you before the semester starts. To benefit fully from the sessions, you are recommended to go through the relevant unit(s) beforehand.

Online communication

Students enrolled in ENGL 1202EED have an additional means of communication with their peers, tutor and Course Coordinator through the Online Learning Environment (OLE). Please refer to the OLE User Guide and try to log in to the OLE system.

We recommend the following strategies for working through ENGL 1202EED. Remember to contact your tutor for assistance and advice if required.

1. Read this Course Guide thoroughly.
2. Organise a study schedule. Refer to the Course overview and the suggested study schedule for more details. Think about how much time you plan to spend on each unit and the assignments related to the units.
   When you have created your own study schedule, do all you can to stick to it. The major reason for student failure is falling behind with the coursework. If you get into difficulties with your schedule, please let your tutor know before it is too late for help.
3. Turn to Unit 1 and read the overview and objectives for the unit.
4. Work through the unit, carry out the activities, and use the audio-visual material when indicated. Attempting the activities, and checking your responses against the feedback provided at the end of the unit, is very important for developing your skills.
5. Regularly review the objectives for the unit to confirm that you have achieved them. Keep a note of any problems and discuss them with your tutor as soon as possible.
   Repeat Steps 3 to 5 for Units 2–5.
6. Submit your assignments on time. You will learn a lot by completing the assignments and by carefully studying your tutor's comments on them. The assignments have been designed to help you fulfil the objectives of the course.
7. After completing the final unit, review the course and prepare for the final examination.

To complete ENGL 1202EED successfully, you are required to pass both the continuous assessment (the assignments) and the examination.

Assignments

There are two assignments for continuous assessment purposes in this course. These two assignments, which are equally weighted, are together worth 40% of the total course score. Detailed information on the questions, how to approach them, and the submission dates are provided in the Assignment File on the OLE.

Final examination

The examination, which accounts for 60% of the overall course grade, will last for two hours. It will include listening comprehension tasks and oral components. It will thus assess your mastery of the two language skills — listening and speaking. If you have completed the assignments and have acted on your tutor's feedback on your work, you will be well prepared for it. Further information about the examination, including a specimen examination paper, will be sent to you later in the course.

We hope that you find ENGL 1202EED University English: Listening and Speaking interesting and useful. The effort you put into studying it will be worthwhile, as good listening and speaking skills can help you perform more effectively in academic, work and social situations.

We wish you every success in your studies.

Dr Tiffany Ip Nga-min

Dr Tiffany Ip gained a PhD in neurolinguistics from the University of Hong Kong after completing her bachelor's degree in psychology and linguistics. For over a decade, she has taught various academic English, linguistics and psychology courses at the post-secondary and tertiary levels. She also possesses extensive experience with course development for online and face-to- face learners, copyediting and writing.