English for Effective Communication II: Reading and Writing

Welcome to ENGL E200 English for Effective Communication II: Reading and Writing.

ENGL E200 is a one-semester, five-credit middle level course which focuses on developing your reading and writing proficiency in academic and work contexts. The course, which seeks to integrate reading and writing 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 E200 operates, what the course covers, and how to work through it. 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.

This course aims to consolidate students’ English reading and writing proficiency. It helps students to develop better reading and writing skills for academic and work purposes.

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

• demonstrate knowledge of the features of different types of academic and professional texts;
• analyse the structure of a range of written texts;
• use academic and professional styles of writing, and
• integrate reading and writing skills and use appropriate language functions for effective communication in study. and work contexts.

The following table provides an overview of the course and suggests the amount of time to allow for completing each unit. However, as each of us has our own pace of study, this schedule is only a guide. You can adjust it to fit your personal needs more closely. The estimated time, on average, which you need to spend on this course is about eight hours per week — although this will clearly vary, depending on your proficiency in English. This estimate includes time for reading the study units and carrying out the practice activities in them, writing your assignments, reviewing the study materials, attending the tutorials and preparing for your final examination.

ENGL E200 consists of this Course Guide, five study units, assignments and a reading booklet for each unit, all of which are provided by HKMU.

Course Guide

The Course Guide tells you briefly what the 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 E200 contains five study units.

• Unit 1 is concerned with explaining, describing and defining ideas and concepts.
• Unit 2 focuses on comparing and contrasting ideas and sequencing events.
• Unit 3 deals with the analysis and presentation of causal relationships.
• Unit 4 considers the analysis of logical relationships and argument in persuasive writing.
• Unit 5 covers different kinds of negotiation.

Each unit includes a very wide range of practice activities to help you to improve your English language skills.

Reading booklets and recommended books

ENGL E200 involves the study of a large number of texts from a wide range of sources and subject areas. In most cases, these are included in separate reading booklets for each unit, which you will need to refer to while studying the units.

There is no set text for the course.

However, for ENGL E200 — and indeed all your degree courses in English medium — you will need a good English dictionary. We recommend either the most current edition of the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English or Collins Cobuild English Dictionary, though there are also other very useful ones such as the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English.

Also, if you feel the need to improve your grammar, we suggest you consult Collins Cobuild English Grammar: Helping Learners with Real English (1992), London: Collins ELT.

Assignment File

The Assignment File, available on the HKMU Online Learning Environment (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, email address and phone number of your tutor. Your tutor will:

• conduct tutorials for your group;
• assess and comment on your assignments;
• 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 or 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 or 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 strongly encourages you to make use of this assistance.

Tutorials

There are eight tutorials spread throughout the course. The first session is an introduction to the course and may take a different form from the other tutorials. The times, dates and locations of the tutorials will be sent to you before the semester starts. On the OLE, you will get access to a Tutorial Manual which suggests topics for your tutorial group and tutor to work on at each session. To benefit fully from the tutorials you will need to have studied the relevant unit(s), including the practice activities, beforehand.

Online communication

Students enrolled in ENGL E200 have an additional means of communication with their peers, tutors and Course Coordinator through the OLE. To enrich your learning experience, you are encouraged to use the online components. 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 E200. Remember to contact your tutor for assistance and advice if required.

1. Read this Course Guide thoroughly.
2. Organize a study schedule. Refer to the course overview and to the suggested Course Schedule on the OLE for more details. Note the minimum time you are expected to spend on each unit and how the assignments relate to the units. You need to gather together all this information in one place, such as your diary or a wall calendar.
3. Do all you can to stick to the study schedule that you have created. The major reason for student failure is falling behind with the course work. If you get into difficulties with your schedule, please let your tutor know before it is too late for help.
4. Turn to Unit 1 and read the overview for the unit.
5. Work through the unit and carry out the activities. Attempting the activities, and checking your responses against those in the feedback provided, is very important for developing your language skills. Check your understanding at the end of each section of the unit.
6. Keep a note of any problems and discuss them with your tutor as soon as possible.
7. Follow the same strategy for each unit in the course, submitting the assignments when required. You will learn a lot by doing the assignments and by studying carefully your tutor's comments on them. The assignments have been designed to help you to meet the learning outcomes of the course and, therefore, to pass the examination.
8. After completing the last unit, review the course and prepare for the final examination.

To complete ENGL E200 successfully, you are required to pass both the continuous assessment (the assignments) and the examination.

Assignments

There are three assignments for continuous assessment purposes in this course. These three assignments, which are given equal weighting, constitute 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.

Final examination

The examination at the end of ENGL E200 lasts for three hours and has a value of 60% of the total marks for the course.

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 you find English for Effective Communication II: Reading and Writing interesting and useful. The effort you put into studying it will be worthwhile, as good reading and writing skills can help you to perform more effectively in academic and work situations.

We wish you every success in your studies.

Philip Leetch (BA, MA, PGCE) is former Assistant Principal of SKH Tang Shiu Kin Secondary School. He has taught in the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates, and has lived in Hong Kong for over 15 years. He has published a large number of textbooks and has been a member of a wide range of Education Department and Examinations Authority Committees. He has also served as a member of the Standing Committee on Language Education and Research (SCOLAR).