ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Academic year and teacher
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- Versione italiana
- Academic year
- 2022/2023
- Teacher
- DORA RENNA
- Credits
- 6
- Didactic period
- Secondo Semestre
- SSD
- L-LIN/12
Training objectives
- The objective of the course is for students to acquire linguistic and communicative competences in English at the B1 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Students will develop reading, writing, and listening skills for professional purposes and specifically within the realm of agrotechnology.
At the end of the course, students will acquire the following abilities:
- a good knowledge of the phonological, morphological, syntactical and semantic aspects of the English language (at the B1 CEFR level);
- a good understanding of the syntactic and lexical characteristics of the specialized language of the sector;
- comprehension of (oral and written) texts concerning agrotechnology;
- use of the English language in a flexible and effective manner for professional purposes. Prerequisites
- None
Course programme
- The course is organized in two modules:
Module A: 30 hours of grammar instruction at the B1 CEFR level to introduce students to the main phonological, morphological, syntactical and semantic aspects of the English language.
Module B: 18 hours of instruction in specialized English to provide students with the descriptive and metalinguistic tools to foster language awareness and reflection on the English language by means of the study of authentic materials related to the field of agrotechnology, laboratory research, and professional domains.
MODULE A
The grammar module will cover the following topics:
Present tenses
Past tenses
Present perfect and past
Future tenses
Modals
Passive form
Reported speech
Articles and nouns
Pronouns and determiners
Relative pronouns and Relative clauses
Adjectives and Adverbs
Comparatives and Superlatives
Conjunctions and Prepositions
Conditional clauses (zero, first, second and third)
Phrasal verbs
MODULE B
For the study of English for Specific Purposes, a Professional English text will be used (see: Reference texts). An overview of the topics that will be covered follows:
Planning a career in science and applying for funding
Writing a scientific CV
Communicating with the scientific community
Using evidence in arguing a point and doing a review
Designing an experiment and evaluating the results
Describing data, materials and methods
Taking notes in the lab
Discussing results: writing and organizing the discussion
Presenting results: writing an abstract and attending conferences
Content-specific vocabulary Didactic methods
- The course is organized in two modules:
Module A: 30 hours dedicated to grammar at the B1 CEFR level will be videorecorded and available online on the e-learning platform that students can access with their UNIFE credentials. At the beginning of the course an assessment of students’ English proficiency level will be administered to ascertain which 30-hour lesson pack they should follow (Basic or Intermediate).
Modulo B: 18 hours of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) instruction will take place face to face, in class. ESP classes will apply a series of techniques to present specialized language to students, among which the analysis of technical-scientific texts, scientific articles and informative articles, and descriptive texts from which to deduce specific lexicon.
NB: There may be variations in the aforedescribed methods based on the epidemiological situation. Learning assessment procedures
- The final exam is written and concerns the course content and materials of the two modules. The objective of the final exam is to verify the extent to which students have reached the aforementioned course objectives. The final exam consists of multiple-choice questions: 15 grammar questions, on the topics covered in the online course segment (Module A), followed by 16 ESP questions on the topics of Module B. Students are not allowed to use a dictionary (neither monolingual nor bilingual). Each question that is answered correctly results in the attribution of a point and each skipped or wrong answer results in null points. Students who obtain at least a 60% on the exam achieve a passing mark.
Exams will take place in person or online (Moodle platform) based on the epidemiological situation.
Students who have obtained a language certification, among those that are accepted, are exonerated from the exam. Students in possession of one of the accepted certifications (listed at: https://mfp.unife.it/corsi-di-studio/riconoscimento_certificazioni/a-a-2021-21) and who are interested in validating the "English Language" exam can submit an application for recognition of the certification to the Career Office (Ufficio Carriere) by 30 November of the year of enrollment in which the instruction of the course occurs along with the original certificate and a photocopy. The Career Office will validate the exam. Reference texts
- For Module A:
R. Murphy, English Grammar in Use. A self-study reference and practice book for intermediate learners of English. 5th edition. Cambridge University Press (2019). ISBN: 9781108457651
For Module B:
T. Armer, Cambridge English for Scientists, Cambridge University Press (2011). ISBN: 9780521154093
