Advanced Reading Skills for Students of English as a Second Language

Curriculum Guideline

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Course
EASL 0365
Discontinued
Yes
Course Code
EASL 0365
Descriptive
Advanced Reading Skills for Students of English as a Second Language
Department
English as a Second Language
Faculty
Language, Literature & Performing Arts
Credits
3.00
Start Date
End Term
201520
PLAR
No
Semester Length
15 weeks
Max Class Size
18
Contact Hours
4 hours per week
Method(s) Of Instruction
Lecture
Tutorial
Learning Activities

The instructor will observe and evaluate students’ development and participation in reading activities. 

Whole and small group instruction will be combined with individual assistance and student-directed learning.   Students will participate in the setting of goals by identifying their communicative and language development needs, and will participate in the selection of learning activities.

Course Description
This course is for students who wish to upgrade their reading skills for academic and/or employment purposes.
The course is designed for students who need guided practice in developing academic reading skills and consolidating good reading habits. This course emphasizes reading longer passages at a reasonable rate, and taking notes for study purposes.
Course Content

Reading Skills

  1. To follow the ideas and information in readings
    • Follow written instructions
    • Use pre-reading techniques to prepare for a reading task
    • Follow organization of a text
    • Recognize purpose and/or issue overall key idea, main ideas, and key details in expository readings
    • Identify writer’s overall point of view, tone, bias, supporting argument and evidence in opinion readings
    • Identify character, conflict, theme, plot and setting in literature (e.g. short stories)
    • Identify components of a case study and analyze by applying a problem-solving process in case studies
  2. To determine meanings of unfamiliar words in course materials
    • Use an English-English dictionary
    • Use word analysis
    • Use context clues within sentences and in surrounding sentences
  3. To use library resources to locate materials
  4. To use study skills
    • Place text material into visual form
    • Interpret and create visuals such as graphs and tables
    • Prepare study notes
    • Prepare for objective and essay tests
    • Learn content from text/class materials concerning economic, political, cultural, and socially relevant topics
  5. Recognize cultural differences and show awareness of the general features of own culture and associated world views

Writing Skills

  1. To write formal summaries and paragraphs based on assigned and self-selected readings.

Accuracy

  1. To self-monitor for accuracy
    • Use and follow editing symbols
    • Use word processing editing aids (spelling, grammar check, thesaurus)
    • Apply knowledge of parts of speech, sentence elements, specified sentence types, and mechanics
    • Identify and correct errors for specified items
  2. To identify and work on as need arises
    • Correctly form and use present perfect and past perfect tenses, present perfect continuous and past perfect continuous tenses
    • Correctly identify and correct sentence structure errors such as run-ons, fragments and missing sentence elements (e.g. missing subject)
    • Correctly identify and correct infinitive/gerund/base form errors
    • Correctly use articles and other determiners
    • All accuracy items from 100 and 200 levels

Classroom Skills

  1. To take responsibility for the following:
    • attendance and punctuality
    • class work and assignments
    • participation and teamwork
Learning Outcomes

Overall Objectives

Extend reading competence and language accuracy for a range of educational and/or employment purposes

Specific Objectives

  1. Read and understand academic material from a variety of sources
  2. Take notes for a range of academic purposes
  3. Use strategies to explore academic material
  4. Collect, analyze, and organize relevant information from a variety of sources
  5. Plan, write, revise and edit formal compositions such as summaries
  6. Monitor and apply strategies to improve accuracy in grammar, sentence structure, and word choice to a specified level of accuracy
  7. Participate effectively in a college classroom
  8. Assess progress
Means of Assessment
  1. Complete assigned skill-development tasks
  2. Prepare a file of assigned and self-selected readings; highlight and make margin notes on the readings
  3. Prepare reference lists in  APA style
  4. Prepare a file of writing that meets instructor specified criteria for content and organization, language use and accuracy, and format
    These assignments should include:
    • informal notes that summarize ideas and information from reading materials
    • at least one formal summary of an article
  5. Complete quizzes, both skill based and content based
  6. Complete at least one self-assessment of learning strategies, progress, and classroom skills to be discussed with the instructor
  7. Complete tasks to a specified level of accuracy

This is a Mastery Graded course.

Textbook Materials

Students may be required to purchase a textbook to be determined by the instructor.

Prerequisites

EASL 0260 or EASL 0265 or EASL assessment

Recommended: EASL 0275

Corequisites

Recommended EASL 0375

Which Prerequisite

EASL 0465 or EASL 0475 or EASL 0460