Course Description
This course is designed for students who wish to upgrade their conversational and speaking skills for educational and/or employment purposes. This course is most appropriate for people intending to take college or university courses. Students will improve their ability to communicate in a variety of increasingly complex settings, especially in problem situations. They will also develop formal group discussion and leadership skills, and prepare and make formal presentations. Through these activities, students will continue to develop language skills, including grammar, sentence structure, vocabulary and pronunciation elements.
Course Content
Listening
To follow conversations, discussions, reports and lectures.
Speaking
- To participate in conversations and discussions
- As participant
- Listen and actively contribute
- Use appropriate language functions and conversational signals
- Use all functions and gambits from 100 and 200 levels
- Use functions appropriately for expressing possibility, speculating and critiquing
- Use gambits appropriately for participating in discussion
- As leader
- Give instructions for group tasks
- Assign responsibilities
- Use gambits to effectively maintain discussion
- Ask questions
- Encourage participants to participate
- Manage turn-taking
- Keep group on task
- Report discussion outcomes
- As interviewer
- Prepare questions
- Explain purpose
- Ask/clarify questions
- Take notes
- Synthesize/summarize notes
- To prepare and deliver formal reports and presentations
- Select topic
- Develop purpose and focus
- Gather information/prepare outline
- Identify, locate and cite resource material and demonstrate an understanding of plagiarism
- Develop introduction, body, conclusion
- Prepare visuals and explain models, formulas, graphs, tables or other schematics
- Rehearse and obtain feedback
- Prepare note cards
- Use effective presentation style: eye contact, body language, vocal delivery, and language use
- Prepare follow-up discussions
- Give impromptu talks on spontaneous topics and under timed conditions
- Use pronunciation elements appropriately
- Recognize cultural differences and show awareness of the general features of own culture and associated world views
Reading and Writing
- To prepare for, support, and extend speaking
- Attendance and punctuality
- Class work and assignments
- Participation and teamwork
- Communication and completion of simple information management tasks using appropriate technology (Internet, course website, etc.)
Accuracy
- For explicit instruction and evaluation
- All accuracy items from 100 and 200 levels
- Perfect tenses: past perfect, future perfect, all conditionals
- Verbals: infinitives, gerunds, base forms
- Word forms: nouns, adjectives, adverbs
- Pronunciation elements
- All pronunciation elements from 100 and 200 levels
- Special intonation patterns, vowel and consonant sounds
- Articles
- Question formation (for interview skills)
Classroom skills
- To take responsibility for the following:
- Attendance and punctuality
- Class work and assignments
- Participation and teamwork
- Communication and completion of simple information management tasks using appropriate technology (Internet, course website, etc.)
Learning Activities
The instructor will facilitate, observe and evaluate students’ participation in communicative activities. Whole and small group instruction will be combined with individual assistance and student-directed learning. Students will participate in the setting of goals by identifying their communicative and language development needs, and will participate in the selection of learning activities.
Means of Assessment
- Complete assigned skill development tasks. These should include the following:
- Pronunciation exercises ( passages marked for specific pronunciation features, error records)
- Reports on assigned and self-selected speaking tasks
- Participate in and lead small group and class discussions; carry out assigned role, (leader, note-taker, reporter, observer, monitor), initiate and respond to questions, and complete assigned tasks
- Give at least one impromptu talk on a course topic or issue or an unfamiliar topic to small groups and/or whole class
- Give at least one formal report or summary from the following list to the whole class.
- a report on a current event or recent trend
- a summary of an educational video
- a summary of an article
- Complete at least one listening and speaking project which includes a written component, from the following list:
- participating in an interview or discussion with students in regular Douglas College classes
- arranging for/introducing/thanking a guest speaker from the College or the community
- interviewing an individual in the college or the community
- Complete oral tasks to a specified level of delivery competence. This must include appropriate eye contact, body language, and vocal delivery features such as voice quality and appropriate pauses
- Complete oral and written tasks to a specified level of language accuracy
- Complete skill based quizzes
- Complete at least one self-assessment of learning strategies, progress and classroom skills to be discussed with the instructor
Learning Outcomes
Overall Objectives
Extend communicative competence and language accuracy for a range of educational and/or employment purposes
Specific Objectives
- Understand general interest and academic oral communication on sometimes unfamiliar topics to obtain detailed information, to explore academic content, and to develop critical thinking
- Take notes for academic purposes
- Use strategies to learn academic material
- Communicate competently in culturally-appropriate ways on sometimes unfamiliar topics using appropriate language functions to obtain and give detailed information, to explore academic content, and to solve problems
- Speak comprehensibly in most contexts with frequent self-correction and rephrasing but with errors that occasionally interfere with communication
- Read to prepare for, support, and extend listening and speaking skills and expand vocabulary
- Write with a specified level of accuracy to extend speaking skills
- Monitor and apply strategies to a specified level of accuracy in grammar, sentence structure, word choice and intonational stress/pronunciation
- Assess progress
- Participate effectively in a college classroom
Textbook Materials
Students may be required to purchase a textbook and/or audio materials.