Unit information: English as a Foreign Language 1F in 2011/12

Unit name	English as a Foreign Language 1F
Unit code	LANG00011
Credit points	20
Level of study	QCA-3
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 4 (weeks 1-24)
Unit director
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	Centre for Academic Language and Development
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

The unit further extends and defines elements of English which include grammar, lexis, pronunciation and functional language beyond core level 1 (covered in EFL1). It develops further the four macro-language skills and corresponding sub-skills in addition to study skills. Continuing emphasis is placed on socio-linguistic competence and form and meaning are explored further as is the use and production of prosodic features. Learners should reach an early advanced level of communicative and operational competence .

Aims:

The unit is a module within the Pathway Certificate (International Foundation Year) programme, designed to prepare international students for undergraduate and postgraduate study in the UK. It is one of a number of complementary units whose overall aim is to improve the language and study skills required to succeed at a British university. The specific aims of this module are to:

• Extend and consolidate further overall communicative competence, including sociolinguistic competence

• Further develop linguistic competence, in terms of extending grammatical and lexical use

• Consolidate general reading skills, such as skimming, scanning and search reading

• Further improve general listening skills, such as gist and detailed listening, as well as listening for specific detail

• Extend writing skills at sentence level and above to include a range of genres, including exposition and discussion essays

• Promote good pronunciation with a focus on production of prosodic features

• Consolidate and activate awareness of register

Intended Learning Outcomes

As a result students will be able to:

• Use English more accurately and appropriately in different registers of general English, both spoken and written.

• Recognise and produce language with greater accuracy, confidence and appropriacy in ways which demonstrate a capacity to choose lexical and structural items in a wide range of general English contexts.

• Interact with both native and non-native speakers of English in a variety of general and social settings

• Handle complex language more competently and confidently

Teaching Information

Learning will be facilitated in small groups. Individual and group-based work will be exploited as appropriate. In addition to a range of textbooks and published language materials, authentic materials (text, audio and audio-visual) as well as computer based language learning materials will be used. Situations will be created which endeavour to replicate the work/study contexts that students might encounter.

Assessment Information

Assessment will be undertaken by means of language tasks (grammar and vocabulary) at sentence level and above. Task formats include gap-fill, matching as well as transformation activities. Reading, writing and listening skills will be assessed through timed assessments and there is a graded oral task. All skills and language are tested throughout the term (week 4 and 7) and in the final examination (week 10).

Coursework (wk 4 and 7) = 50%

Examination (wk 10) = 50%

Reading and References

• Murphy, R. (1985). English Grammar in Use. Cambridge University Press.

• Cunningham and Moor. (2005). Cutting Edge. Pearson Longman.