English

Teaching Aims of Oral English Course for Freshmen and Sophomores Oral English consists of four semesters of instruction during the freshmen and sophomore years. This course is designed to provide students with native English teachers as well as recorded native English speakers who facilitate the practice of listening and speaking English in typical situations. Systematic instruction aims to provide students with the ability to express ideas effectively using English.

For freshmen, objectives of this course are as follows: - To improve students' pronunciation through phonics, drills, activities, and songs.

- To expand students' practical vocabulary.

- To improve students' fluency through in class speaking activities and debates.

- To correct common grammatical errors in spoken English.

Benchmark Skills Specifically Assessed: - The ability to construct and sustain simple arguments - The ability to communicate effectively in oral English in a variety of situations - Pronunciation, intonation and vocabulary - Grammar and sentence structure For sophomores, in addition to the aims mentioned above, this course is designed to augment and further enhance the Student’s knowledge of the English language with paramount importance placed upon the capacity of the student to articulate and convey their ideas, opinions, desires and arguments verbally in English.

The course aims to effect

amelioration in the ability of students to think in a logical manner and as a corollary to express beliefs in a well-reasoned fashion. Furthermore emphasis will be placed upon guiding the students towards improved pronunciation coupled with edification in lexis and overall command of more complex sentence structures.

Assessments of the course may include attendance, in-class performance, assignments, and final exams, several among which, though not necessarily all, may be adopted by teachers.

Teaching Aims of Junior and Senior Writing Course The course in general aims at helping students majoring in English language and literature to improve their English proficiency – in all the four skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking – through writing. As such, it is a course that emphasizes reading and writing and the interactions between them. We expect our students to learn both how to understand and how to think critically about the ideas and language of others through their reading and how to articulate their own meaningful responses to the ideas and language of others through their writing. More specifically, students are expected to organize grammatically correct, logically sound and linguistically expressive writings after systematic training. At the same time, they are expected to learn to appreciate and evaluate literary or academic writings.

For juniors, this course is designed to give them an opportunity to learn, develop, and further practice forms of academic writing such as arguments and analyses, as well as to explore forms of the essay, such as the personal essay, the literary essay, political or social commentary, etc. Basic technical issues such as the organization of paragraphs and overall arrangement of structures can be introduced so that students may have a general understanding of successful and expressive writings. In the process, students will get extensive opportunities to read and listen to, as well as discuss and write about, current events both local and worldwide, thereby improving their proficiency in spoken and written English as well as their logical/critical thinking and argumentation skills.

Teaching and learning activities may include: --- a variety of group, pair and individual planning and writing tasks； --- plenty of practice to help with each stage of the writing process； --- models of writing that are based on real assignments.

By the end of the course, the students should be able to: --- understand spoken or written English news reports in various spheres (political, economic, social, cultural, moral, educational, etc.) accurately; --- use English effectively in speaking and writing about current events;

--- analyze and discuss news reports or commentaries in a critical manner; --- develop a personal and rational point of view on current events and issues.

Assessments of the course may include attendance, in-class performance, assignments, papers and final exams, several among which, though not necessarily all, may be adopted by teachers.

For an advanced course for seniors, in addition to the aims mentioned above, it is also expected to provide students with relevant instructions in creating voice, matching style to audience, and creating forms that accomplish rhetorical aims. Although students have been studying English for 8 years or even longer, they have seldom used the language as the means of discovering or appropriating new knowledge. While students learn to develop their thinking through reading, class discussion, collaborative classroom practices, or sequenced assignments, they also learn to use varied practices and processes to develop critical thinking and reading, to shape an expository essay with a thesis, and to control the rhetorical and grammatical effects of their paragraphs and sentences.

Similar procedures and assessments may be adopted.

A teacher is expected to teach both oral English course to freshmen or sophomores and writing course to juniors or seniors Requirements of teachers: 1. Native speaker with good oral and written English skill 2. Holder of Bachelor's Degree or above 3. Friendly, good communication skills and team spirit 4. Experience of Teaching English as a Foreign Language preferred

Correspondent: Yangjin Liu

lyj@sdu.edu.cn