88052 - Advanced English I And Laboratory

Academic Year 2018/2019

  • Docente: Anna Marchi
  • Credits: 8
  • SSD: L-LIN/12
  • 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 the student can understand the main ideas of complex written and oral texts in the field of social and political sciences. Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity and can express and negotiate viewpoints . Can produce clear, detailed texts on a wide range of subjects and explain a viewpoint on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options.

Course contents

The 30 hours course is organized into two modules: one module will be devoted to enhancing students' reading and listening skills by exposing them to a wide range of text types (written and spoken), including: print and broadcast news, editorials and opinion articles, analyses and interviews, tweets. The students will learn to understand and identify information in a complex text and summarise it, as well as comprehend the key features of an oral text.
The second module will focus on persuasive discourse. Topics covered will include: modality, evidentiality, evaluation, metaphors and humour. The students will learn to identify and understand evaluation and point of view and to analyse and interpret rhetorical features in a variety of text types, in particular pubic speeches.

Readings/Bibliography

Recommended exercises for autonomous study:

C. Bevitori e M. Di Serio: ReViews: online Reading Skills for students of Political Science. Bologna: CLUEB 2003.

Further reading for autonomous study:

Partington A. & Taylor, C., The Language of Persuasion in Politics. Routledge, 2018.

For the oral exam:

John E. Joseph, LANGUAGE AND POLITICS. Edinburgh University Press, 2006.

Jonathan Charteris-Black, Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor, 2016

J. Atkins, A. Finlayson, J. Martin, N. Turnbull, Rhetoric in British Politics and Society, Palgrave 2014

THE SELECTION OF CHAPTERS AVAILABLE FOR THE EXAM WILL BE NOTIFIED AT THE BEGINNING OF THE COURSE

A dictinary of your choiuce, for example:

The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Oxford: OUP
The Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary. London:Collins

Teaching methods

The course consists of lectures (30 hours) and a language laboratory (40 hours)

Lectures are aimed at developing skills in order to comprehend and interpret written and oral texts of average difficulty.

The language laboratory is aimed at improving fluency and accuracy in listening and speaking skills in order to allow students to reach a good command of linguistic and communicative competence. It will be conducted in relatively small groups.

Assessment methods

Assessment will be made through two written tests (mid-term test and final exam ) and a final oral exam.

The mid-term test includes:

a reading test with multiple choice and open questions and writing summary of the text
a listening comprehension (of a TV news report) with open questions

The final test includes:

a cloze test listening to a spoken text followed by questions based on the analysis of the transcript of the same text

Oral exam:

Spoken English will be assessed in an oral examination on selected parts from one of the texts in bibliography. For the students who have attended the lab as well as the course the oral examination is vocational (3 chapters as follows: 2 chapters 1 from Text A, 1 from Text B and 1 from Text C). For the students who have attended the course but not the lab the oral examination is mandatory (2 chapters: 1 from Text A and 1 from Text B).

Students who do not attend lessons can take the exam as follows:

reading comprehension (open and multiple choice questions on: structure, comprehension, referents, linkers, modals, evaluation - book review or newspaper article) and listening comprehension(open questions and cloze - BBC News)

Oral: 5 chapters

(2 from Text A, 2 from Text B and 1 from Text C).

 

    TEXTS:



    1. Jonathan Charteris-Black, Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor, 2016

      Chapters: 1; 3; 4; 6; 7; 9; 10

    2. J. Atkins, A. Finlayson, J. Martin, N. Turnbull, Rhetoric in British Politics and Society, Palgrave 2014

      Chapters: 1; 3; 4; 5; 8

    3. John E. Joseph, LANGUAGE AND POLITICS. Edinburgh University Press, 2006.

    Chapter: 6

    Office hours

    See the website of Anna Marchi