ENGL 101 (Communication Skills I) 5 credits (10 instructional hrs/week)Oral Skills Lab (5 instructional hrs/week)

Reading and Writing 1 (5 instructional hrs/week)

Course Description

This is a four-month course in communication skills designed for students in the first semester of the Pre-Professional Program. It emphasizes the development of general listening and speaking skills essential for oral communication tasks inside and outside of the classroom. It also includes integrated reading and writing sessions in which students develop their reading and critical thinking skills while gaining practice in the academic writing process. Through extensive reading and composition practice, students gain mastery of the organizational patterns of paragraph writing in a variety of rhetorical modes. The course is divided into two components: an Oral Skills Lab and an Integrated Reading and Writing Component. The approach is multi-skilled; all four language skills are systematically developed and integrated in the classroom.

Prerequisites: None

Goals and Performance Objectives

Goal 1.0 To help students improve their listening comprehension skills

1.1 Students should be able to comprehend an extended conversation between native speakers delivered at a normal speed.

1.2 Students should be able to comprehend general and academic lectures geared towards a university level audience.

Goal 2.0 To help students improve their oral communication skills

2.1 Students should be able to express themselves with sufficient structural accuracy and vocabulary to participate effectively in most formal and informal conversations on practical, social and professional topics.

2.2 Students should be able to demonstrate a reasonable degree of accuracy in pronunciation to fulfill communication tasks at an intermediate level.

2.3 Students should be able to deliver a short oral presentation (5-10 minutes) on an academic topic of their choice. This presentation should follow a structured outline and make use of visual aids as appropriate.

2.4 Students should be able to participate in discussion groups, demonstrating their ability to communicate on concrete topics related to their particular interests and special fields of competence.

Goal 3.0 To help students develop reading and critical thinking skills essential for academic writing at the paragraph level

3.1 Students will develop critical thinking skills necessary for the academic handling of text. They should be able to:

3.1.1 Make predictions about, analyze, and draw conclusions from information presented in various rhetorical forms of academic text.

3.1.2 Recognize, state, and support their own points of view in writing, making use of the various methods of development and strategies that English-language writers use in academic discourse.

3.2 Students will learn how reading can be a basis for generating writing. They

should be able to:

3.2.1 Write short responses (from 1 to several sentences) to comprehension questions based on a reading passage.

3.2.2 State their prediction and inferences about a reading passage in written form (from 1 to several sentences).

3.2.3 Identify the author’s purpose and determine the main idea(s) of a reading passage.

3.2.4 Analyze the rhetorical structure of a reading passage and find the relationship between the ideas.

3.2.5 Make connections between a reading passage and what they already know.

3.2.6 Use information from a reading passage to expand their active and passive vocabulary, and to practice this new vocabulary in their own writing.

3.2.7 Summarize a short (paragraph-length) reading passage. 3.3 Students will learn how to write an extended response to a reading passage

(paragraph length). In this paragraph response, they should be able to:

3.3.1 Demonstrate grammatical accuracy, including correct usage of punctuation, capitalization and spelling.

3.3.2 Use grammatical structures appropriate for lower intermediate writing (i.e. the basic verb tenses and simple, compound and complex sentence structures covered in Fundamentals of English Grammar and the core writing textbooks, Developing Composition Skills and Introduction to Academic Writing, Level 3).

3.3.3 Use cohesion devices relevant to the method of development.

Goal 4.0 To provide students with a developmental, step-by-step approach to paragraph writing at the intermediate level

4.1 Students should be familiar with the three stages of the writing process: prewriting, drafting and editing. They should be able to:

4.1.1 Demonstrate the use of the following techniques for generating ideas at the prewriting stage: brainstorming, free writing, WH-questions,

clustering and making lists. 4.1.2 Understand the difference between revising and editing a text.

4.2 Students should be able to write a carefully constructed paragraph (10-15 sentences) in which they:

4.2.1 Formulate a topic sentence with a restricted topic and controlling idea.4.2.2 Develop the paragraph with main points and supporting details.

4.2.3 Revise the paragraph to improve the unity and coherence.

4.3 Students should be able to discuss, analyze and apply to their own writing the methods of development that English language writers use in academic discourse in the following modes:

4.3.1 Narrative: Students should be able to organize a paragraph that uses chronological ordering to relate a sequence of events or to give a set of instructions.

4.3.2 Descriptive: Students should be able to write a paragraph that briefly describes a place or an object according to spacial ordering.

4.3.3 Expository: Students should be able to develop a paragraph using reasons or examples, or a paragraph that expresses an opinion with adequate support.

4.4 Students should be able to apply rules of sentence structure, grammar and mechanics to academic writing tasks at the lower intermediate level. These writing tasks will be presented in the core writing textbooks, Developing Composition Skills and Introduction to Academic Writing, but may also be taken from the core grammar textbook, Fundamentals of English Grammar (ENGL 102).

Course Content

Core Textbooks:

Oral Skills Lab: Interactions 1: Listening & Speaking, Middle East Diamond Edition (Tanka/Most)

Chapter 1 (Academic Life Around the World)Chapter 2 (Experiencing Nature)Midterm Exam # 1

Chapter 3 (Living to Eat or Eating to Live)Chapter 4 (In the Community)Midterm Exam # 2

Chapter 5 (Home)Chapter 6 (Cultures of the World)

Written Final Exam (Chapters 1 - 6 Interactions 1 Listening and Speaking)Oral Final Exam

Integrated Reading and Writing: Introduction to Academic Writing Level 3, 3rd ed, Hogue (IAW) Developing Composition Skills, 2nd ed, Ruetten (DCS)

Chapter 1 (IAW) (Paragraph Format)Chapter 2 (IAW) (Narrating Paragraphs)Chapter 2 (DCS) (Narrating)

Writing Assignment # 1

Chapter 3 (ICW) (Paragraph Structure)Chapter 1 (DCS) (Introducing the Paragraph)

Writing Assignment # 2Midterm Exam #1

Chapter 4 (IAW) (Describing Paragraphs)Chapter3 (DCS) (Describing)

Writing Assignment # 3

Chapter 5 (IAW) (Logical Order of Ideas)Chapter 4 (DCS) (Analyzing Reasons)

Midterm Exam #2Writing Assignment # 4Chapter 6 (IAW) (Process Paragraphs)Chapter 5 (DCS) (Analyzing Process)

Writing Assignment # 5Final Writing Exam (Paragraph Writing)

Supplementary Textbooks

First Steps in Academic Writing, Level 2, 2nd Ed. (Hogue)

Select Readings: Intermediate (Linda Lee/Erik Gundersen)

English for Health Sciences: Reading Skills Elementary Level/2nd Edition, S. Mazyad

Sentence Skills (2004) (John Langan)

New Interchange 2: Student’s Book, 2nd Edition, Jack Richards

Oxford Graded Readers, Levels 1 and 2

Course Assessment

Assessment Tools

Written and oral examinations will be used throughout the course to assess the students’ progress in the core textbooks, Interactions 1: Listening and Speaking, Introduction to Academic Writing (3), and Developing Composition Skills.

Listening and Reading Comprehension Skills – Students will be presented with short reading passages and recordings of extended discourse (short conversations between native speakers and brief lectures on general and academic topics of an intermediate level). General comprehension of these oral recordings and reading passages will be assessed through written quizzes and unit tests using the following formats:

Fill in the blank questions (simple completion questions consisting of sentences from which vocabulary items, content information and grammatical structures are removed)

Cloze exercises (short texts from which vocabulary or content information has been removed)

Multiple-Choice questions

T/F questions

Short answer responses

Matching questions

Production Skills – As part of the continuous assessment of the course, oral production skills will be evaluated through in-class speaking activities, presentations and discussion sessions, and writing

skills will be evaluated through regular course assignments. Final assessment will consist of a Final Written Exam based on the three core textbooks used in the course. In addition to this exam, a Final Writing Assignment and an Oral Final Exam will be given in Week 16 of the course. The Oral Final Exam will be conducted in a formal setting in which a panel of two to three instructors will interview the student. Normally, this panel will consist of the instructor for the LAB sessions, the instructor for the Reading and Writing sessions, and one outside instructor who is not directly involved in the communications course.

ENGL 101 (Communication Skills I)Oral Skills Lab

Integrated Reading and Writing

Continuous Assessment (60%)

Midterm Exam 1 (Sunday, November 2) Int. 1 & IAW/DCS

5%

Midterm Exam 2 (Sunday, December 7)Int. 1 & IAW/DCS

10%

Writing Assignments 5 Assignments [2%, 3%, 4% 5%, 6%]IAW & DCS

20%

Oral Communication Skills HQAP*: 2 Presentations [3%, 5%],A minimum of 5 Quizzes [5%], Attendance & Participation [2%]

15%

Integrated Reading & Writing HQAP*: A minimum of 4 Quizzes [8%],

Attendance & Participation [2%]

10%

_________________________________________________________________60%

Final Assessment (40%)

Final Oral Exam (Interview Format) 5%

Final Writing Exam (Paragraph) 5%

Final Exam (Written)Int. 1 & IAW/DCS

30%

_________________________________________________________________40%

TOTAL 100%

* Homework, Quizzes, Attendance and Participation

ENGL 101 Syllabus(Communication Skills I)

ORAL SKILLS LAB INTEGRATED READING AND WRITING

WEEK 1Aug 31 – Sept 4, 2014

Core Textbook:Interactions 1: Listening and Speaking(Chapters 1-6)

Course Outline and OverviewGoals and Objectives

Chapter 1 (Academic Life Around the World)

Core Textbooks:Introduction to Academic Writing: Level 3 (IAW)(Chapters 1-6)

Developing Composition Skills (DCS)(Chapters 1-5)

Course Outline and OverviewGoals and Objectives

Chapter 1 (IAW) (Paragraph Format)Chapter 2 (IAW) (Narrating Paragraphs)

WEEK 2Sept 7 - 11

Chapter 1 (Academic Life Around the World)

Chapter 2 (IAW) (Narrating Paragraphs)Chapter 2 (DCS) (Narrating):-Reading: ‘My Fault’-Writing: Narration (pp.32-35)Focusing on a Controlling Idea, Supporting the Main Points with an Incident, Giving Background Information, Organizing by Chronological Order-Composition Skills (pp. 39-41)Connecting Words for Narration (Prepositions of Time, Transition Words for Sequence)Grammar Skills (Simple Past, Past Continuous, Used to/Would)

WEEK 3Sept 14 - 18 Chapter 1 (Academic Life

Around the World)Chapter 2 (IAW) (Narrating Paragraphs)Chapter 2 (DCS) (Narrating):-Reading: ‘Wings of the Morning’ (Optional)-Writing: Narration (pp.32-35)Focusing on a Controlling Idea, Supporting the Main Points with an Incident, Giving Background Information, Organizing by Chronological Order-Composition Skills (pp. 39-41)Connecting Words for Narration (Prepositions of

Time, Transition Words for Sequence)

Grammar Skills (Simple Past, Past Continuous, Used to/Would)

Writing Assignment # 1 (Due)

WEEK 4Sept 21 –

25*

Chapter 2 (Experiencing Nature)

Chapter 3 (ICW) (Paragraph Structure)Chapter 1 (DCS) (Introducing the Paragraph):-Reading: ‘Reaching Across the Gap: How I Write’-Writing: The Paragraph (pp. 6-17)Topic Sentence, Support, The Conclusion, Unity,Coherence-Composition Skills (pp. 17-18) Coordinators (and, but, or, so)Transition words (Therefore, However, Moreover)

Sept 28 – Oct 9

EID AL-ADHA BREAK(Sept 28 – Oct 9)

WEEK 5Oct 12 – 16

Chapter 2 (Experiencing Nature)

Presentation 1

Chapter 3 (ICW) (Paragraph Structure)Chapter 1 (DCS) (Introducing the Paragraph):-Reading: ‘Reaching Across the Gap: How I Write’-Writing: The Paragraph (pp. 6-17)Topic Sentence, Support, The Conclusion, Unity,Coherence-Composition Skills (pp. 17-18) Coordinators (and, but, or, so)Transition words (Therefore, However, Moreover)

WEEK 6Oct 19 – 23

Chapter 2 (Experiencing Nature)Chapter 3 (ICW) (Paragraph Structure)Chapter 1 (DCS) (Introducing the Paragraph):-Reading: ‘Reaching Across the Gap: How I Write’-Writing: The Paragraph (pp. 6-17)Topic Sentence, Support, The Conclusion, Unity,Coherence-Composition Skills (pp. 17-18) Coordinators (and, but, or, so)Transition words (Therefore, However, Moreover)

Writing Assignment # 2 (Due)

WEEK 7Oct 26 – 30

Chapter 3 (Living to Eat, or Eating to Live?)

Chapter 4 (IAW) (Describing Paragraphs)Chapter 3 (DCS) (Describing):-Reading: ‘Our Cottage’-Writing: Past Description (pp. 53-59)

Focusing on a Dominant Impression, Organizing by Spatial Arrangement-Composition Skills (pp.61-62) Prepositions of Place and Direction, Simple Present, Simple Past, There + be, Subject-verb Agreement, Order of Adjectives-Writing: Present Description (p. 63)

WEEK 8Nov 2 – 6

Midterm Exam # 1 (Sun, Nov 2)

Chapter 3 (Living to Eat, or Eating to Live?)

Chapter 4 (IAW) (Describing Paragraphs)Chapter 3 (DCS) (Describing):-Reading: ‘Our Cottage’-Writing: Past Description (pp. 53-59)Focusing on a Dominant Impression, Organizing by Spatial Arrangement-Composition Skills (pp.61-62) Prepositions of Place and Direction, Simple Present, Simple Past, There + be, Subject-verb Agreement, Order of Adjectives-Writing: Present Description (p. 63)

WEEK 9Nov 9 – 13

Chapter 4 (In the Community)Chapter 4 (IAW) (Describing Paragraphs)Chapter 3 (DCS) (Describing):-Reading: ‘Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China’ (Optional)-Writing: Past Description (pp. 53-59)Focusing on a Dominant Impression, Organizing by Spatial Arrangement-Composition Skills (pp.61-62) Prepositions of Place and Direction, Simple Present, Simple Past, There + be, Subject-verb Agreement, Order of Adjectives-Writing: Present Description (p. 63)

Summary Writing

Writing Assignment # 3 (Due)

WEEK 10Nov 16 – 20

Chapter 4 (In the Community)Presentation 2

Chapter 5 (IAW) (Logical Division of Ideas)Chapter 4 (DCS) (Analyzing Reasons):-Reading: ‘A Celebration of Teachers’-Writing: Analyzing Reasons (pp. 74-78)Supporting the Main Idea with Details, Supporting Generalization with Examples, Organizing into Major Points-Composition Skills (pp. 79-83) Connecting Words to Indicate Examples, Reasons or Causes, Pronoun Consistency, Tense Consistency-Writing: Outlining

WEEK 11Nov 23 – 27

Chapter 4 (In the Community)

Chapter 5 (IAW) (Logical Division of Ideas)Chapter 4 (DCS) (Analyzing Reasons):-Reading: ‘A Celebration of Teachers’-Writing: Analyzing Reasons (pp. 74-78)Supporting the Main Idea with Details, Supporting Generalization with Examples, Organizing into Major Points-Composition Skills (pp. 79-83) Connecting Words to Indicate Examples, Reasons or Causes, Pronoun Consistency, Tense Consistency-Writing: Outlining

Writing Assignment # 4 (Due)

WEEK 12Nov 30 –

Dec 4

Chapter 5 (Home)

Chapter 5 (IAW) (Logical Division of Ideas)Chapter 4 (DCS) (Analyzing Reasons):-Reading: ‘Teenagers and Stress’ (Optional)-Writing: Analyzing Reasons (pp. 74-78)Supporting the Main Idea with Details, Supporting Generalization with Examples, Organizing into Major Points-Composition Skills (pp. 79-83) Connecting Words to Indicate Examples, Reasons or Causes, Pronoun Consistency, Tense Consistency-Writing: Outlining

WEEK 13Dec 7 – 11 Midterm Exam #2

(Sun, Dec 7)Chapter 6 (IAW) (Process Paragraphs)Chapter 5 (DCS) (Analyzing Process):-Reading: ‘You a blogger? Why Not?’

Chapter 5 (Home)

Oral Activity: Interviews

-Writing: Process (pp. 95-100)

Analyzing a Process, Support for a Process, Focusing on a Main Idea, Introducing the Process,

Organizing by Chorological Order-Composition Skills (pp. 101-103)Connecting Words for Process (Time and Sequence)

WEEK 14Dec 14 – 18

Chapter 6 (Cultures of the World)

Oral Activity: Interviews

Chapter 6 (IAW) (Process Paragraphs)Chapter 5 (DCS) (Analyzing Process):-Reading: ‘You a blogger? Why Not?’-Writing: Process (pp. 95-100)Analyzing a Process, Support for a Process, Focusing on a Main Idea, Introducing the Process,Organizing by Chorological Order-Composition Skills (pp. 101-103)Connecting Words for Process (Time and Sequence)

Writing Assignment # 5 (Due)

WEEK 15Dec 21 – 25

Chapter 6 (Cultures of the World)

Group Discussions

Chapter 6 (IAW) (Process Paragraphs)Chapter 5 (DCS) (Analyzing Processes):-Reading: ‘Map Your Tongue’ (Optional)-Writing: Process (pp. 95-100)Analyzing a Process, Support for a Process, Focusing on a Main Idea, Introducing the Process,Organizing by Chorological Order-Composition Skills (pp. 101-103)Connecting Words for Process (Time and Sequence)

WEEK 16Dec 28 –

Jan 1, 2015

Review WeekFinal Writing Exam

Final Oral Exam

WEEKS 17, 18

Jan 11 – 15, 2015

FINAL EXAM PERIOD