MODULE CONTENTS AND TEACHER GUIDE HNDE

1^st Year 1^st Semester

 EN 1101: Reading Skills & Vocabulary Development

 Nature and purposes of reading (10 / 05 hrs)

1. • What is Reading: Give two or three definitions

• “What the brain does in ‘reading’ is to make sense of a particular piece of written language in the light of prior knowledge and current intentions and expectations of the reader” (Frank Smith 1982. Understanding Reading)
• Interactive process in which the reader constructs meaning from a particular piece of writing.
• What do good readers do when they read?

Get actively involved with the text to understand words, syntax, content (intended message)

• What is necessary for good reading?

To understand that:

• Reading efficiently means tackling everyday tasks with a clear purpose.
• Need to adjust reading strategy to suit the purpose
• Different reading tasks require different degrees of attention and understanding
• There is a close relationship between reading and other skills and therefore reading should be integrated with writing, speaking and listening.

• Get students to list the purposes of reading and the type of texts
• To learn,
• To function in society
• To satisfy personal interests

 

• Reading skills: scanning and skimming: develop speed reading ( 10/05 hrs)
• Scanning- read rapidly to locate specific information.
• Text types: reading an index, telephone directory, a dictionary to find a word, a name, a number. reading notes, messages, letters, news items etc. to find some specific information, provide opportunities to scan different text types
• Skimming: reading to obtain the general, overall idea/gist of the whole text
  • make students aware of the parts of the text which contain the most important information and that they should read only those
  • read the introductory and concluding paragraphs, the first and the last sentences of the paragraphs in between. Pick up the key words such as dates, names, while moving their eyes down the page
  • Imposing time limits and comparing the time required by various students will be a rapid reading technique.

• Literal comprehension: understanding directly stated information ( 15/ 07hrs)
• Techniques: fact questions based directly on the text
  • True/false statements
  • Completion
  • Multiple choice questions
• Text types: brochures, information manuals, letters, news reports, etc.
• Word attack skills
• Deducing meaning of unfamiliar words using context clues
  • Using other words such as synonyms and antonyms in the same sentence or paragraph
  • Using the meaning of the sentence as a whole e.g. The Indians cut their canoes out of tree trunks by using an adze. The meaning of adze can be deduced from the meaning of the whole sentence.
• Using structural and morphological information

• Guessing the word class
• Understanding the way how suffixes and prefixes are used to build words
• Text attack skills: interpreting grammatical cohesive devices-reference, substitution, elliptical expressions
• What is Cohesion? What are cohesive devices?

Cohesion helps a text to hang together. (Combine well). It expresses the continuity that exists between a part of a text and another part. Cohesive devices help in achieving cohesion. They are of two main types –grammatical and lexical.

• Grammatical cohesive devices:
  • Reference: identifying the meaning of proforms such as it, he, our, these, those, which are used to avoid repetition
  • Substitution: e.g. I have a red pen, but Nimal has a blue

Show the difference between substitution and reference.

• Ellipsis: leaving out a word/words from a sentence which the reader can understand from the surrounding text: e.g. They came although they were asked not to.(not to come)

 

• Word formation in English (10/05 hrs)
• Adding prefixes and suffixes
• Suffixes: can change the word class and the meaning of the word

Noun suffixes: -er. writer, -ee, employee, -tion. Pollution, -ism. Buddhism, -ist. typist, -ness. Goodness

Adjectives: -able. Readable

Verbs: -ize. Modernize

Other suffixes: excitement, flexibility, childhood, membership, active, useless, forgetful, delicious

Activity: Form nouns /adjectives/ verbs/ using the given suffixes, as in the examples. Use the dictionary to find the meanings.

• Prefixes: often used to give adjectives a negative or an opposite meaning; uncomfortable, inconvenient, dissimilar

Activity: List words with other prefixes, e.g. anti-, auto-, bi-, ex-

 

• Identifying wordfamilies (15/ 08 hrs)
• Focus: How word families are developed from a single root

e.g. part, particle, partition, partly, partner, participant, particular

• Note the stress in each word. Practice saying the words with correct stress.

e.g. photograph, photography, photographic

 

• Wordswith more than one meaning ( 10/ 05 hrs)
• Focus: find the right word in context
• Types of tasks: discuss different meanings of these words. Make two sentences which give two different meanings.

e.g. book:     I bought a story book.

Book a ticket in advance in the intercity train.

EN 1102: Effective Communication Skills I

Conversational routines (10 / 05 hrs)

• Greetings/thanking/ apologizing/ complimenting/ leave taking etc.
• Types of activities: Dialogues/conversations in different settings (pair and group work)e.g. at the post office/office/market
• Procedure: listen to the dialogue. Practise it with a partner. Then write their own dialogues and practise saying them.

Interaction in ‘service’ situations (10 / 05 hrs)

• Enrolling in a school/institute, obtaining membership in a library/club/Association, reserving seats in a cinema/train/ on the plane
• Type of activities: role play, simulation
• Functions: request, explain, justify, and decide,

Functional dialogues (10 / 05 hrs)

• Buying, selling, bargaining, complaining
• Type of activities: role play
• Exponents: Can I have…, I would like to…, I want to change this shirt…, Can I pay by cheque/credit card?

Enact social situations (10 / 05 hrs)

• Situations: Tea/dinner/ Birth day/party, Theatre /bus queue, .etc
• Types of activities: simulations, dialogue between the host/hostess and guests, guests themselves.
• Language focus: welcoming, thanking, wishing, congratulating, making, making a short speech, informal conversation.
• Conversation between persons in a queue: about the play/ film, long queue etc.
• Language focus: explain, discuss, compare, and complain

Fluency based activities ( 10 / 05 hrs)

• Focus: how to maintain fluency in a conversation avoiding excessive pausing, breakdowns and errors in grammar and pronunciation. Involve students in talking about a range of topics which engage their interests, experiences and opinions.
• Types of activities: Use pictures, newspaper headlines cartoons as stimuli. Provide necessary language (structures, words).and discussion questions, e.g., Do you agree with what the woman in the picture is saying?

Functional dialogues ( 10 / 05 hrs)

• Asking for help/permission/ directions
• Exponents: Can I ask you a favour, May I…, Could you please…, Would you mind if I …, I would like to… I wonder if I could…
• Types of activity: Role plays the model dialogue. Prepare their own dialogues. Perform them before the class.

 EN 1103: Listening in English I

 Nature of listening and factors that affect listening (06 / 03 hrs)

• What is listening? Ability to identify and understand what others are saying, involves understanding a speaker’s accent/pronunciation/grammar/ vocabulary and grasping the meaning.
• Factors that affect listening:

• Get the students to discuss and write a list in small groups.
• Whole class discussion. Use the following factors in the discussion:

Listening passage is heard only once, content usually not well organized, cannot be listened to at a slower speed (message on radio, on tape), difficult to recognize individual words in the stream of speech, may contain colloquial words and expression and redundant utterances: repetitions, false starts, rephrasing, self-corrections, elaborations, meaningless utterances (e.g. I mean. you know…), no body language and facial expressions, etc

Extract specific information –selective listening (06 / 03 hrs)

• Purpose: not to look for global/general meaning, but to be able to find necessary information. Students listen for names/dates/certain facts and events/ location/situation/context etc.
• Types of tasks:
  • Listen to news. In the work sheet tick the category to which the news items you hear fall into.
  • Listen to announcements e.g. Airline arrivals and departures. Fill in the flight numbers, destinations, gate numbers, departure times etc.

Listening for the main idea and specific details (06 / 03 hrs)

• Types of activities
• Listen and take notes under given headings
• Listen and answer comprehension check questions
• Text types: Interviews, speeches

Understanding planned monologues (06 / 03 hrs)

• In planned monologues the language is carefully structured. Provide the students with a task sheet to be completed while listening.
• Types of activities: weather reports, news readings

Understanding unplanned monologues (06 / 03 hrs)

• In unplanned monologues which are usually crated on the spot in response to an initial question there is a lot of pauses, redundancy and fragmentary utterances.
• Types of tasks:
• identify the meaningless speech, list them, and compare with others
• Comprehension questions

EN 1104: Language Structure Usage & Linguistics

 Word classes and their grammatical functions (10/ 05 hrs)

• Open classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs
• Closed classes: determiners, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, operator-verbs, interjections, enumerators.
• Types of activities: write examples for each word class
• Rationale for word classes in grammar: Words which belong to one class only can be used in a particular position in a sentence. Provide examples.
• List the differences between the two types: e.g. open class-thousands of words. Closed classes- limited number
• Some words appear under more than one word class, e.g. ‘play’ as noun and verb, ‘that’ as determiner and conjunction
• Types of activities: write sentences to show how the word ‘round’ appears as noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and preposition.

Note: Word classes should be taught briefly (Only the introduction to word classes)

 Elements of grammar (10 / 05 hrs)

• Units of language:

The sentence-a set of words standing on their own as a sense unit.

Clause – a kind of mini sentence, a set of words which makes a sense but may not be concluded by a full stop. A sentence may have only one clause or 2 or more clauses.

The phrase: A shorter unit of one or more words e.g. noun phrase

• Parts of a sentence

Subject (topic), predicate 9everything said about the topic)-give examples

• Sentence elements

• Subject, verb, object, complement, adverbial
• The most common parts of the sentences
• Object may be direct or indirect, the complement refers to the same thing as the subject,
• Adverbial adds further information (words, phrases such as, at home, yesterday)

• Activities: make sentences using the clause elements. Analyse their structure.

The simple sentence (10 / 05 hrs)

• A sentence consisting of only one clause
• Clause types: S V, S V O , S V C, S V O , S V O O , S V O A , (provide examples)
• Activities: Indicate to which of the clause types the given sentences belong to

 The simple sentence: questions, commands, exclamations, negation (10 / 05 hrs)

• Questions-
• Types of questions; yes-no questions, tag questions, Declarative questions, Alternative questions, wh- questions
  • Yes-no questions- operator is placed before the subject. If there is no operator, ’do’ is introduced, e.g. has the boat left? Does he like Mary?
  • Wh- questions:
  • Alternative questions-
• Commands: Usually has no subject. It has an imperative finite verb (the base form) of the verb
• Exclamations: sentences which have an initial phrase introduced by ‘what’ or ‘how’

e.g. What a noise they are making!

• Negation: accomplished by inserting ‘not’, n’t ‘between the operator and the predication

Nouns & Noun phrases (10 / 05 hrs)

• Noun classes
• Differences between count and mass nouns, regular and irregular nouns, abstract and concrete nouns.
• Structure of the noun phrase: head word, pre-modifiers, post modifiers
• Word classes that can function as pre-modifiers-determiners, enumerators, adjectives, modifying nouns
• Word classes that can function as post modifiers-mostly prepositional phrases
• Functions of the noun phrase-subject, direct object, indirect object, complement, apposition, adverbial. (provide examples)
• Activities: analysis of noun phrases, expanding the noun phrase using pre and post modifiers.                                                         

Linguistics

Introduction to language & Linguistics (10 / 05 hrs)

• What is language?
• What is Linguistics?

Phonetics & Phonology (30 / 15 hrs)

• What is phonology?
• What is phonetics?
• Differences between phonology & phonetics.
• Sounds of English & phonetic transcription.
• Organs of speech.
• Introduction to phone, phoneme & Allophone. ( Only the introduction to terminologies)

  EN-1105     – Introduction to literature

1. Introduction to literary eras(30 / 15 hrs)

Mediaeval  – a ballad, Demon Lover

Elizabethan  – sonnet by Shakespeare, Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day’ Rose Cheeked Laura by Thomas

Campion

Metaphysical  – Death be not proud by Donne, To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell

Augustan  -‘The Portrait of Zimri’ from Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden

Romantic – Rainbow by Wordsworth

Victorian   – LotusEaters (The first of the poem up to choric song) by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

Modern – Irish Airman foresees his death by W.B Yeats

 

2. Introduction to the elements of poetry, short story, novel(05 / 03 hrs)
3. Introduction to literary techniques.(05 / 02 hrs)
4. Introduction to literary skills. (10 / 05 hrs)

 

6. Novel -‘Lord of the flies’ by William Golding  & Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (20 / 10 hrs)
7. Short story –           ‘Open Window’ by Saki , The Rocking Winner by D.H Lawrence & Uncle Ernest by Allan Sill toe(20 / 10 hrs)

 EN 1106: Professional Writing I

Nature and functions of written language (05/ 02 hrs)

• Identifying the difference between the spoken and written English and formal and informal English
• Identifying different types of texts and functions: descriptive / narrative / expository / argumentative / persuasive

 Writing essentials (05/03hrs)

• Cohesion-unity of thought/relation between sentences in a paragraph and paragraphs in a longer text
• Clarity and precision: organising writing using a clear structure, content, layout, handwriting
• Spelling, punctuation, grammar, vocabulary

 General guidelines for student portfolios (05/03 hrs)

Introduction: A collection of students’ work that demonstrates to students and others their efforts, progress and achievements. Students should have their own portfolios which can be a file folder.

Purpose:

• To collect students’ writing during the semester.
• To provide a tangible record of writing for assessment
• To provide a tangible record of students’ writing progress

Instructions:

• Have students date their samples as they write or revise them.
• Identify writing as “first draft” “revision” or “final copy”
• Check each folder regularly so that specific needs can be addressed as they arise
• Encourage students to share their writing with peers

 Developing a paragraph (05/ 02 hrs)

• Provide different types of paragraphs. Ask students to find .topic sentence, supporting details, conclusion
• Instructions to write different types of paragraphs, e.g. Put these sentences into the correct order to make a paragraph

 Letter writing (10/05hrs)

• Understand the format of a personal letter and a formal letter
• Personal letters – express happiness / sorrow / exchanging news

e.g. I was very happy to / delighted to / glad to / hear that…

• Formal letter – address, date, designation and address of the person, salutation, underlined subject of the letter, body of the letter (introduction, reason, request for action) conclusion, complimentary close, signature, name and address.
  • Practice writing letters of request, letters of inquiry, letters of invitation, letters of thanks
  • Language differences-provide examples, e.g. I am writing to you regarding…, I wish to inform you…

 Practical writing (10/05hrs)

• Notices
• Invitation cards

Help students with the writing process; planning, drafting, revising, proof reading and presenting

Professional writing (10/05 hrs)

• Memos-used for internal office correspondence. Provide a model to read and study the content (group work).

E.g. you are the secretary of the sports club of your office. Write a memo to members informing about the annual picnic.

• Faxes
• Emails
• Agendas of meetings-Provide a sample-usually follow the same pattern.

Imaginative writing- dialogues (10/ 05 hrs)

• Write imaginary dialogues and act them out. e.g. Explaining about a broken window, a conversation between a mosquito and a dog
• Provide a new ending to a familiar story
• Use 3 or 4 familiar objects and get students to write an incident/situation involving them.
  

EN 1107: CALL &Study Skills I

1. Computer literacy, computer competency (10/ 05 hrs)

• Computer literacy: general knowledge of what computers are used for and some general experience in using them. List the purposes in using computers
• Computer competency: ability to use the computer as a tool for particular purposes

A general introduction-email, conferencing programs (written and spoken), word processing programs, language archives (written and spoken)

2. Reinforcement of classroom material (10/05hrs)

Using text books accompanied by CD-ROM disc, which has practice exercises, self-check tests, extra reading material.

3. Speech processing (10/05hrs)

Access to speech recognition programs, simple exercises in pronunciation, feedback graphs showing accuracy of learner’s control of phonemic and prosodic elements

4. Effective use of email (10/05hrs)

• Choose the appropriate software and learn how to use the email system confidently.
• Communicate with the teacher and others to carry out task-based learning projects.

5. Library skills (10/05 hrs)
   • Understanding classification system
   • Using a library catalogue
   • Using the content/index pages of a book to find reference
   • Finding information quickly from bibliography

• Activities:
• Library skills questionnaire, e.g. Write down the classification numbers of the following books and find them on the shelves.
• Give the names and numbers of the books that give information about the following topics

6. Dictionary studies (10/05hrs)

• Getting familiar with the format of good monolingual dictionary entries
• Finding their way around the information a dictionary offers
• Discuss the role of a dictionary
• Assign activities which show the kinds of meanings that are presented and how they are presented.