English III

Code:

FLUP0273

Acronym:

INGLE3

Instance: 2004/2005 - A

Active?	Yes
Web Page:	http://web.letras.up.pt/akdawber
Responsible unit:	Department of Anglo-American Studies
Institution Responsible:	Faculty of Arts

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
EFI	9	Official Study Plan - LEFI	3	-	10	-
EIA	38	Official Study Plan - LEIA	3	-	10	-
EPI	57	Official Study Plan - LEPI	3	-	10	-
		Official Study Plan - LEPI	3	-	10	-
		Plano oficial - 4º ao 5º ano	3	-	10	-
		Plano oficial - 1º ao 3º ano	3	-	10	-
		Plano oficial a partir de 2002	3	-	10	-

Objectives

The English III Course is designed to assist students in developing their productive and receptive skills and their vocabulary, fluency and structural accuracy, in the context of a communicative approach. There is also an academic grammar input, which is available as an Online course for independent self-study. Students will be expected to do independent study, including computer work.

Program

Themes

The two main themes are British Televised Comedy and Change, and each theme has been chosen for a different set of purposes.
The theme of Change is to provide for a particular range of study skills, as well as the means to build up a vocabulary bank that is seen as relevant to the students. Each student is asked to choose a theme which implies some aspect of change. A long list of possibilities will be provided, from decorating a room to plastic surgery, but students are welcome to supply their own individual themes, subject to the teacher’s approval.
Having chosen a theme, each student is then required to build a lexical set around that theme. (See, for example, ideas on how to guide students in creating lexical sets in Seymoor, D. and Popova, M. “700 Classroom Activities”, Macmillan.)
The next step is the discovery, via corpora research and dictionary skills, of how the items in the set are actually used. Finally, the students are required to share their findings in terms of what they consider to be their most useful items. Hopefully, by the end of this process, a considerable vocabulary bank will have been created by the students themselves, which can then be made into a website facilitating e-learning.
The theme of British Televised Comedy has been chosen not only to promote fluency skills, but also to supply transcripts for the analysis of language on a variety of levels.

As this course is THEME-BASED, (see above), the topics will be used as pegs on which to hang language work on the FOUR SKILLS.

It will also be GRAMMAR-BASED. The main aims of this year's grammar are that it should enable students to improve their speaking and writing skills and raise their awareness of how grammar works as a system. There will be a review of grammar previously studied in years 1 and 2. The following areas will be covered, the specific details of which can be found in the second half of Advanced Grammar in Use (see bibliography):

1. NOUNS AND COMPOUNDS.
2. DETERMINERS AND QUANTIFIERS.
3. RELATIVE AND PARTICIPLE CLAUSES.
.
4. PRONOUNS, SUBSTITUTION AND ELLIPSIS.
5. ADJECTIVES.
6. ADVERBS AND CONJUNCTIONS.
7. PREPOSITIONS AND PREPOSITIONAL AND PHRASAL VERBS.
8. INVERSION AND ORGANISING INFORMATION.

The programme will also be SKILLS-BASED.
1. READING: authentic texts in modern English.
2. WRITING: compositions of various types, primarily descriptive/narrative and argumentative.
3. SPEAKING: oral competence will be developed through activities such as group work, simulations, role plays, discussions, oral presentations and debates. Pronunciation skills will be practised, and the Phonetic Alphabet revised.
4. LISTENING: activities based on audio and video recorded texts.

Main Bibliography

Students must select a work of 20th century literature to read. The title(s) will be supplied at the beginning of the 1st semester. The final oral will be based on the reading of the book.

Hewings, Martin ”Advanced Grammar in Use”, 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Dictionaries:
A good English-English dictionary is essential at this stage. We recommend the latest edition of any of the following:

Chambers English Dictionary
The Collins English Dictionary
The Concise Oxford Dictionary
Cambridge International Dictionary of English
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary
Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners

Complementary Bibliography

Crystal, David ”Rediscover Grammar”, (Revised Edition), Longman, 1999.
Greenbaum, S. & Quirk, R. “A Student’s Grammar of the English Language”, Longman,1990.
McDowell, David “Britain in Close-up”, , Pearson Education Ltd., 1999.

Teaching methods and learning activities

Classes T/P

Software

videos, DVDs and computers

Evaluation Type

Distributed evaluation with final exam

Eligibility for exams

Students are required to attend 75% of classes

Calculation formula of final grade

50% written tests
50% oral/aural tests

Examinations or Special Assignments

Students are required to prepare at least one oral presentation to be given in front of the class. This counts towards the final assessment.

Special assessment (TE, DA, ...)

December Exam. Extra wprl tp be given to working students by agreement.

Classification improvement

September Exam

Observations

Lessons are given in English.