Students will develop their listening skills through the use of authentic and realistic listening tasks in a wide range of academic situations. Students will listen actively to discussion, conversations and lectures on a variety of topics with varying lengths with emphasis on improving: listening comprehension (by using pre-listening, during listening and post-listening and fix-up strategies), note taking (organization, completeness and accuracy of notes), understanding the relationship between ideas, and the speaker's intent and attitude,, critical and analytical listening, study skills and test (exam) taking strategies and building academic vocabulary.
A variety of authentic academic reading texts will be used, including formatted, unformatted, instructional and informational texts. Students will engage in a variety of reading tasks with emphasis on improving:
Students will develop their speaking skills through a variety of authentic and realistic tasks in academic situations including; impromptu speaking, one academic presentation (10-15 minutes) and pronunciation practice with the emphasis on improving: the use of complex structures, the use of academic vocabulary and topic specific vocabulary, fluency and intelligibility, control of grammar and pronunciation, the use of proper word and sentence stress, intonation, rhythm, pitch and linking, the use of techniques to get attention, interrupt, direct the conversation, give examples, express opinions, agree or disagree and the development and integration of critical thinking skills in all speaking tasks.
The writing course will provide opportunities for students to develop further skills in the writing process. Students will complete a variety of writing tasks and assignments which will represent authentic writing situations to be encountered in their future academic studies. Sentence- and paragraph-level skills will be reviewed and reinforced. Students will work on writing descriptions and summaries of formatted text (visual graphics - tables, graphs, diagrams, etc.), as well as paraphrasing and summarizing unformatted text, including academic articles. Students will develop essay and report writing skills required to support their academic writing needs. Students will also be introduced to a variety of research skills and write a research paper. Study skills and test-taking techniques will be identified and practiced throughout.
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This course will focus on academic language tasks related to developing effective research skills and documentation practices, with learning activities designed for Canadian Language Benchmarks Levels seven and eight. Students will learn how to focus a topic or central questions; store and manage source information; access online sources, library resources, and research databases to located sources; evaluate and ask critical questions about sources; integrate sources effectively using signal phrases, quotations, paraphrasing, and summarizing; cite sources accurately; and format bibliographies according to APA guidelines.