English I and II are the first two semester-long modules of the four-part English course taught during the first two years of the B.A. programme in English and American Studies of Sofia University. Together with the practical grammar and practical phonetics courses English is designed to improve students’ general proficiency in English. Having successfully completed all courses, by the end of the second academic year, students should have reached level C2 according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Importantly, the course also develops study skills needed by students to function effectively in the academic environment. Finally, it is also concerned with the development of specialized, transferable as well as social skills that students will need not only during their studies, but also after graduation in their professional and civic lives.
English I and II award 12 ECTS credits each. Each part comprises two four-hour sessions per week (“Day A” and “Day B”) taught by two lecturers. The materials for the course will be available at the British and American Studies Resource Centre (aka the English Library) and online at: www.elearn.uni-sofia.bg By the beginning of the third week each student will have to choose a post-WWII novel (at least 200 pages long, originally written in English) to work with during the first semester (the extensive reading book).
Specific objectives
- developing students’ listening skills in an academic context so that by the end of the course they can produce summaries of academic lectures by taking notes and discriminating between main points and detail;developing students’ reading skills so that by the end of the course they are approximating the reading style of an educated native-speaker, varying their reading strategy according to text type and purpose, and are able to extract meaning in an efficient way from a range of English text types, especially academic and literary texts;
- enhancing the fluency and accuracy of students’ speaking skills, especially those of discussion, questioning and exposition required in an academic forum and formal registers;
- developing students’ writing skills; help them become comfortable with expressing their ideas on a range of general and academic topics coherently, using advanced grammatical structures and vocabulary in a variety of text types; developing academic integrity and compliance with academic style, both in composition and formatting;
- extending students’ knowledge of and ability to use appropriately advanced lexis; developing editing skills;
- helping students’ become autonomous learners aware of the learning strategies they can adopt inside and outside the classroom to further their language learning;
- developing the study skills of students, such as note-taking, using the library and reliable Internet sources, which will contribute to their learning in content areas.
- developing critical thinking, problem-solving, independent research, academic writing and presentation skills.
Evaluation
The final result from the course will be the average of the Continuous Assessment mark (CA) and the Final Examination mark (FE). No student will pass the course without a positive grade for both CA and FE. The threshold for both CA and FE will be 50%.
CA consists of 7 elements: two marks for class participation (for Day A and Day B); written task one: extensive reading book plot summary; academic essay portfolio; oral presentation; vocabulary assignment one; vocabulary assignment two. Each CA element has equal weight in the overall CA mark, but failure to submit any of the elements on time leads to a zero mark. No submissions after the deadlines will be accepted. Detected plagiarism (unacknowledged or inappropriately acknowledged quotation/citation) leads to a zero mark for this particular assignment which is not subject to improvement within the current academic year.
FE consists of the following elements: i) dictation (10 points); ii) reading summary (30 points); iii) reading comprehension (30 points); iv) vocabulary (60 points). The total duration of FE is 3 hours: i) dictation (30 minutes); ii) reading summary (45 minutes); iii) reading comprehension (45 minutes); iv) vocabulary (45 minutes) and a 15-minute break.
