Course syllabus

Course-PM

FSP055 English lp3&4 VT21 (7.5 hp - note this is a pre-university course and cannot be included in a Chalmer's degree - check your university back home if these credits will be accepted for what you need them for).

This course runs between January and May 2021.

The course is offered by the Department of Communication and Learning in Science

Contact details

• Course manager and teacher: Carina Sjöberg-Hawke carsjobe@chalmers.se 
• Course examiner: Andreas Eriksson andreas.eriksson@chalmers.se 

Course purpose

To prepare students who need to use English in their studies at Chalmers. The course is intended mainly for basic to intermediate students who need to strengthen their ability to speak, write, and understand English.

This course aims to guide you in being able to select, structure, and present material from your field of study to a non-specialist audience in English in a clear and effective manner. You will be able to more comfortably understand, summarise, and reformulate the main content of oral presentations and lectures in speech and writing. By the end of the course, you should be able to prepare and write short coherent descriptions of technical content based on your field of specialization or your peers'. With these means, it is hoped that you will become accustomed to applying a more process-oriented approach when working with texts and oral presentations.

Learning objectives and syllabus

• express himself/herself clearly in both speech and writing in prepared situations. The focus is thus on strengthening the student's communicative competence.
• select, structure and present material from his/her field of study to a non-specialist audience in a clear and effective manner.
• understand, summarise and reformulate the main content of oral presentations and lectures in speech and writing
• apply a process-oriented approach when working with texts and oral presentations

Link to the syllabus on The Study Portal: Study plan.

Course design

You will practice your oral proficiency through some discussion, mini-presentations, and exercises. There is a strong focus on pronunciation, stress, and intonation. You will present individually and be asked to summarise the content of presentations given by your peers in both speech and writing. Here, phraseology and the structuring of oral presentations are introduced. Written proficiency is also part of the course and will be practiced through summary writing. Some analysis of English grammar and vocabulary will be included.

The course involves four class meetings and a number of asynchronous activities. Below is an overview of the setup. "weeks" refers to course weeks, not weeks of the year.

The main activities revolve around eight obligatory assignments: a pronunciation profile (PROPRO) - 3 hand-ins, four oral presentations, and 3 written summaries. The idea of each assignment is that they should be supportive of the other assignments and each one should, therefore, be completed before attempting the next one. 

Deadlines: it is important that you keep to the deadlines due to the process-oriented nature of the tasks. Any issues with meeting the deadlines, please speak to or email the teacher. 

Revisions: should assignment requirements not be met, revisions will be requested.

Participation: Active participation in the course and attendance in the meetings are expected. Please speak to or email the teachers if you have schedule and/or meeting deadline issues.

Schedule

It is strongly recommended that you plan ahead using the items of the course in the Canvas Calendar, not least because there are not many meetings (most tasks and activities are asynchronous). Any details provided in TimeEdit is limited. Note that since we don't meet that often in this course, "office hours" have been allocated on a few occasions: 12 Feb 11-11.30, 22 March 11-11.30, 12 April 11-11.30. These times (in the Calendar) are for students to meet with the teacher if they have any questions about an assignment, elements on the course, or deadline difficulties.

Course literature

• Recommended reading and exercises to be provided during the course.
• On the following page, you will find links to imporant information related to this course and studying at Chalmers: Important Resources

Changes made since the last occasion

Minor changes have been made to the course in response to the previous course evaluation, including module organisation.

Examination form

Assessment

In order to pass the course, all of the eight obligatory assignments mentioned under course design must be completed and passed. Assignments are to be handed in via their specific Canvas submission slots under the section Assignments. You will be notified through Canvas when an assignment is completed. Assessment of assignments is based on the following criteria: General Oral Presentation Assessment Criteria and General Writing Assessment Criteria.