59961 - English Language (Course and Laboratory) II (M-Z)

Academic Year 2019/2020

  • Docente: Paul Bayley
  • Credits: 8
  • Language: English
  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Forli
  • Corso: First cycle degree programme (L) in International relations and diplomatic affairs (cod. 8048)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course students should reach a minimum level of B1 (Council of Europe framework) for spoken and written English, while the ideal level is B2, and a minimum level of B2 for reading comprehension – ideal level C1. In particular, students should be able to follow a lesson in English, to read a complex text and make an fluent oral report on it. Moreover, they should be capable of writing an essay in grammatically correct and well-organized English

Course contents

The course is composed of a series of 30 hours of lectures, and 40 hours of laboratory work; the laboratory consists in practice in the writing of essays - assignments will be given weekly and the essays will be corrected in the hours dedicated to tutoring.

The course has the principal aim of setting out the fundamentals of essay writing but each lesson will begin with a brief newspaper review based on the online versions of two British daily newspapers to see how the world is represented in the traditional media and which lexical choices are made. As far as the syllabus of the writing component is concerned, the following questions will be dealt with

1. Global structure of an essay; paragraph structure; punctuation, graphical conventions, spelling problems

2. Sentence structure; subordinators and sentence connectors

3. Problems of interference (English/Italian) structural errors; lexical errors.

4. Lexis of geography and politics; description; definite and indefinite articles, concordance.

5. Comparatives; determiners.

6. Substitutive and pronominal forms; genitives; relative clauses

7. Anaphoric it; structure of the verbal group; expressing cause and effect.

8. Tense and aspect.

9. Passive voice; the description of processes.

10. Direct and in direct reports; attribution and citation.

11. Narrative structures; organizing data

12. Generalization, approximation; expressing certainty, probability and possibility

13. Argumentative structures; concession and contrast; argument and counter-argument.

14. Planning an argumentative text; planning a conclusion

15. Expessing one's own opinion and the opinion of others.

Readings/Bibliography

A dossier for attending students will be deposited online (insegnamenti online) in September.

Reference works

A bilingual dictionary (for example Il Ragazzini. Dizionario inglese-italiano, italiano-inglese . Bologna . Zanichelli)

A monolingual dictionary( for example, The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary . Oxford: Oxford University Press, The Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary. London: Collins)

General reading

McGuire, S, Smith, M, The European Union and the United States, Palgrave, 2008.

Heffernan R., Cowley P. and Hay C. (eds), Developments in British Politics 9, Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillan 2011,

Hefferman R., Hay C, Russell M and Cowley P (eds), Developments in British Politics 10, Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillan. 2016

All books are available at the Biblioteca Ruffilli

Teaching methods

The aim of the course, taught in English, is to enable students to learn to write clear and precise English. It will commence with an analysis of the structure of an essay and will in particular focus on the analysis of errors caused by interference. During the course, certain grammatical structures deemed to be fundamental in written English, and textual features characteristic of certain genres, such as descriptive, comparative, argumentative and narrative texts, will be analyzed. From the third week on, time will be dedicated to an analysis of the work produced by students. There will be a tutoring service of at least 4 hours a week for the correction of student essays.

Assessment methods

There will be a mid-term written test during which students will be expected to write a comparison between two countries using as raw material maps and data concerning demography, geography, culture, history and economics

During the final written test, students will have to write an essay, choosing between a range of text types (argumentative text, summary of an article, report, short biography etc.)

Oral skills will be tested by means of a discussion of two chapters of one of the books in the general reading section of the bibliography.

Minimum requisite to pass the exam: B1 in spoken English and B2 in witing and reading.

The three parts of the exam (2 written tests and one oral exam) will each count for one third of the final grade.

STUDENTS WHO DO NOT ATTEND THE COURSE CAN SIT THE EXAM WITH THE FOLLOWING PROGRAMME.

1. A written cloze test whose aim is to verify knowledge of lexis and grammar as well as the ability to understand complex texts. The cloze tests will be drawn from A. H. Birch, The British System of Government, X ed. London: Routledge, 1998 and S. J. Lee, Aspects of British Political History 1914-1995. London: Routledge 1996.

Copies of old exams can be found at https://www.campus.unibo.it [https://www.campus.unibo.it/] and "Insegnamenti online"

2. An oral exam consisting of a discussion of one of either three chapters of McGuire and Smith or five chapters from Heffernan et al 2011 or 2016.

McGuire, S, Smith, M, The European Union and the United States, Palgrave, 2008.

Heffernan R., Cowley P. and Hay C. (eds), Developments in British Politics 9, Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillan. 2011

Hefferman R., Hay C, Russell M and Cowley P (eds), Developments in British Politics 10, Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillan. 2016

All books are available at the Biblioteca Ruffilli

Teaching tools

PC, projector

Office hours

See the website of Paul Bayley