HNDE Syllabus Year 2 – Semester II - EN 2202: Advanced Reading Skills IV

  EN 2202: Advanced Reading Skills IV

Comprehending texts at different levels

·         Reading tasks which help to comprehend a text at different levels. literal comprehension, making inferences, evaluating a text, going beyond the text

Using graphs / diagrams to find information

·         Interpret data in maps, charts, graphs etc.

·         Types of activities:

-   Write down all information diagrams represents

-   Complete text using information from diagram.

Cohesive features

·         Types of activities: finding references, identifying substitution and ellipsis, identifying lexical cohesion

Evaluating the text

·         Focus: develop reader’s critical faculties

·         Types of activities:

-   The article has been written as a film review. What does the writer think of the film? Do you think it fair to write a review of a film like this?

-   After reading the passage, would you describe it as factual / critical / humorous / ironic. Give reasons for your decision.

Integrating activities

·         Interviewing a local reporter or person in the news for more background - Information about a report that appeared in the newspaper (Can be a simulation)

·         Reading a news item which appeared in the paper and re-telling it accurately to the others in the group

·         Clipping local, provincial, national and international news items from a Newspaper and arranging them appropriately on the bulletin board.

Extensive reading (fluent reading or gist reading)

·         Text types: chapter in a book, an article, a short story

·         Focus: less worried about individual words and sentences. Concentrate on the general flow of the text.

·         Activities: Give a headline to each section of the article, Discuss reactions to / feelings about the text

HNDE Syllabus Year 2 – Semester II - EN 2203: Listening in English IV

EN 2203: Listening in English IV

Cloze listening

·         Focus: Listening comprehension

·         Activity: Listen to the short lecture / speech etc.  As you listen, read the text. Listen a few times. Then complete each blank with one of the words given below. There are more words than blanks.

Listening to unscripted spontaneous conversations

·         Text types: conversations, dialogues, a long answer to a question, sports commentaries

·         Types of activities:

-   Students listen to dialogues, conversations that took place at a party, in a meeting etc. and talk about characters, possible situations, settings

-   Identify language functions and their exponents: repetitions, rephrasing, hesitations, contracted forms, incomplete sentences, accents, colloquialisms

Processing authentic video materials

·         Silent viewing: students view video material without sound to consider what is going on and guess what the speakers are doing and saying

·         Soundtrack only: students hear the sound track without the picture and speculate on what the speakers look like, the setting, and the location

·         Beginning only: students view the beginning of a sequence, and then predict what will happen next

·         Ending only: students view the ending and consider what happened earlier

Listen and make appropriate inferences

Infer views and attitudes while listening and   after listening. Discuss in groups

Problem solving – integrated activities

·         Focus: comprehend content to solve problems through their use of both bottom-up and top-down processes.

·         Activities: e.g. The students are detectives listening to a report of a murder. As they listen they complete a grid on the alibis of the suspects. Based on what they hear, they have to discuss and narrow down the suspects to select the murderer.

Ref: Gebhard J.G. 2009 Teaching English as a Foreign or Second Language

Extensive listening

·         Focus: global understanding of spoken language – lectures, speeches, stories, long conversations

·         Types of activities:

-   Condensing – the listener outlines or takes note on a lecture, speech etc, and compare with others. 

-   Speaking as follow up to listening activities: debates, interview, role play,   dramatization, writing essays.

HNDE Syllabus Year 2 – Semester II - EN 2204: Effective Communication Skills IV

  EN 2204: Effective Communication Skills IV

Getting things done

·         Focus: using language for transactional and interactional purposes - how to produce both short and long turns in conversation.

·         Types of activities: Advertisements from yellow pages, discuss what they offer, what you can get done at each place.

e.g.   At the photographer’s you can have your photo taken.

a telephone conversation with an advertiser

Explain how to get things done to a partner, e.g. using a public phone, use a public library, send a parcel abroad

   Ref: Language in Use. Intermediate, page 38

Use visual clues for narration

Types of activities: creating stories / skits using a sequence of pictures

Functional dialogues: making suggestions, making offers

·         Focus: using a range of different structures in conversation, polite speech

·         Types of activities:

-   List the structures that are used to make suggestions

e.g. Shall we drive down to…, We could always…, Let’s have…, I suppose we could…, What about…, Why don’t we…, How about getting a...

-   Make suggestions for a given situation using a range of structures

e.g. The TV is not working…, I don’t feel like cooking tonight…

-   Making offers-accepting / refusing

Expressions: Would you like me to.., Shall I..., I’ll…if you like, Do you want…, Would you like me to…,

Discussions: current news items

·         Focus: Initiate and maintain conversation .making the conversation interesting through various means

·         Types of activities:

-   Watch TV news / listen to radio, read newspaper reports

-   Discuss in groups using given guidelines, prepare a presentation

Interviewing and being interviewed using a questionnaire

·         Type of activities: design a simple questionnaire and use it to get information on a certain topic from your colleagues and outsiders. Compare information and write a report (group work), e.g. how people spend their leisure

Delivering a speech / talk

·         Focus: writing a speech paying attention to the situation, participants and the objective.

·         Procedure:

-   Discuss with the teacher, prepare the speech and deliver it to the rest of the class paying attention to the rate of delivery.

-   In the case of delivering a speech on currant / social issue, class should take a vote to see if they support you or not. A discussion follows.

e.g. Dogs should not be allowed in towns, Why privately owned vehicles should be banned from town centres

HNDE Syllabus Year 2 – Semester II - EN 2205: Language Structure, Usage and Linguistics IV

 EN 2205: Language Structure, Usage and Linguistics IV

Prepositions and prepositional phrases

·         Prepositions: A preposition expresses a relation between two entities.

-   Various types of relational meanings: e.g. place- at, in, on, to, away, from etc.

-   Other meanings: time, cause, instrument, reference

·         Activity: Find examples for each type of prepositional relationships.

·         Structure of the prepositional phrase

                        Preposition + a noun phrase   - in the garden

wh- clause -  about what you said

-ing clause - by signing a peace treaty

·         Functions:

-   a) adverbial, b) post modifier of the noun phrase, c) verb complement d) adjective complement.

-   give examples to illustrate each function

·         Types of activities: underline the prepositional phrases in the text / sentences and label the function of each.

Phrasal verbs

·         Formation:

-   Verb adverbial particle combination e.g. sitting down, taken off

-   Some phrasal verbs retain the individual meanings of the verb and the adverb particle, e.g. sit down. In other phrasal verbs meaning of the combination cannot be built up from the meanings of the individual verb and adverb, e.g. give in (surrender), turn up (arrive, appear)

·         Transitive phrasal verbs: can take an object, e.g. They turned on the light.

-   With most of them, the adverb can either come before or follow a noun object,

e.g. they turned the light on.

-   Intransitive phrasal verbs: a verb plus a particle

-   Drink up quickly.

If-clauses

·         Type 1: if - past tense-will

If you post the letter, it’ll get there by Thursday.

·         Type 2: if- past perfect-would

                        If I had a million pounds I would probably go round the world.

·         Type 3: if-past perfect- would have

If we had taken your advice, we would have saved a lot of time.

·         Types of activities: Complete the conversation / dialogue.

Relative clauses

·         The term relative clause is used for various types of sub clause which are linked to the main clause.

·         Function: post modifier in a noun phrase where the relative pronoun points back to the head of the noun phrase.

·         The relative pronouns in English:  who, whom, whose, which that, and zero (i.e. pronoun omitted),

e.g.   The records which he owns are mostly classical.

         The records he owns are mostly classical.

·         Restrictive relative clauses and non-restrictive relative clauses

·         Types of activities: Expand the sentences using appropriate relative clauses.

        

Comment clauses

·         Function and position: Comment clauses do not add to the actual information in

A sentence, and are loosely related to the rest of the main clause and function as sentence adverbials. In written English they are marked off from the other clause by commas and in speech by having a separate tone unit. They can occur in front, mid-and end-positions in a clause.

·         Comment clauses are of varied types.

                        At that time, I believe, he worked as a mechanic.

He’s a workaholic, you see.

Other examples of comment clauses (mainly in informal speech) are:

You know, I know, I think, I’m afraid, I see, as you see, to be frank, etc.

·         Types of activities

-   Listen to the conversation. List the comment clauses you hear.

-   Listen to conversations of different people. Write down the comment clauses you notice

Language and social interaction

·         Speech acts, openings and closings, turn taking, repairs

·         Implications for language learning

Language learner’s errors

·         Interlingual and intralingual errors

·         The way the errors help to understand how learners process the second language-the interlanguage theory

·         How the study of learner errors help to understand the strategies the learner uses to assimilate the rules of L2

HNDE Syllabus Year 2 – Semester II - EN 2206: Vocabulary Development IV

EN 2206: Vocabulary Development IV

Idioms

·         Focus: The particular meaning cannot be guessed from the individual words, but the context usually helps

-   Idioms describing people: She has a heart of gold;   he’s hard as a nail, cold fish, pain in the neck.

-   Connected with language: To put it in a nutshell this is a waste of time. Who’s going to start the ball rolling, speak someone’s mind, makes sense.

·         Types of activities:

-   Completing a text using idioms,

-   Matching the idioms and their meanings,

-   How do we describe: the person who is the teacher’s favourite etc.

Different collocation tasks

·         Types of activities:

-   Words frequently used together:

List the nouns frequently used with ‘join” e.g. band, army, club etc.

Adverbs with ‘possible’: always, quite

Nouns with ‘negotiate’: deal,

-   List three words that typically occur with these words

Verb: accept, delay, receive                -           payment

Adjective: long, ……….., ………….            -           leg

Adverb: listen - carefully, ……………          etc    

Phrasal verbs

·         English words can combine with prepositions and adverbs (particles) to make phrasal verbs. The dictionary shows them with their definitions and examples at the end of the main entry for adverb.

·         Types of activities:

-   Look at the word ‘run’ .Find the phrasal verbs and their definitions. Use them in new sentences.

-   Circle the particle that fits the meaning of the sentence. The plane took off / over / up later than expected.

-   Completion tasks.

Choosing the right word

·         Focus: Selecting the right word to match the style (formal, spoken, informal) and subject areas (business, science)

Style labels show in what situation a particular word is used, subject words show the subject area and that it is not used in everyday English

·         Types of activities:

-   Write the correct style label for the following groups of words

e.g. thereby, constitute, splendid, notably (formal)

       ok, anyway, ouch, hubby (spoken)

-   Look at a dictionary page. Make a list of subject verbs and style verbs under different headings

-   What subject areas do these groups of words belong to:

e.g. capital, expenditure, joint venture, market share

Word building tasks: adding one idea to another

·         Words for linking sentences / clauses

e.g. For this job you need a diploma. In addition, you need some experience.

Addition words: furthermore, moreover, what’s more(less formal), besides, likewise, similarly, on top of (all) that 

·         Adding words at the end of clauses / sentences

e.g.   They sell beds, chairs, tables and so on.

                        And so forth, to top it off.

·         Adding words that begin or come in the middle of clauses

e.g.   In addition to his degree in Science, he has an MA in sociology.

                  Pursuant to my letter of May first…

Words with interesting origins from other languages

·         Borrowings from other languages:

-   Japanese: tycoon, karate, origami, judo, bonsai, futon

-   Chinese: tea, kung fu, kumquat

-   Arabic: mattress, cipher, alcove, algebra, harem, carafe

-   Turkish: yoghurt, jackal, tulip, caftan

-   Farsi: caravan, shawl, taffeta, bazaar

-   Eskimo: igloo, anorak

-   India: bungalow, shampoo, pyjamas, dungarees

Use a dictionary to check the meanings and to find other borrowed words from Italy, Spain, Greece, France etc,

·         Types of activities: Make two or three networks to help you to learn the words. e.g. food, clothes, sports