Advanced English FORE130005.02
Fall 2007
Instructor:
Classroom Location:
Days & Hours: Monday 9:55-11:35 A.M.
Friday 9:55-11:35 A.M.
Office:
Office Phone:
Mobile Phone:
Office Hours: by appointment
Email:
Textbook:
Close Reading III by Shen et al., Fudan University Press, 2002
Advanced English I by Wu & Huang, Fudan University Press, 2004
Supplementary Material:
Raise the Issue: An Integrated Approach to Critical Thinking by C. Numrich, Longman Publishing Group, 1994
The Cambridge CAE Course by M. Spratt & L. B. Taylor, Cambridge University Press, 2000
Course Objectives:
This course is designed to improve students’ language proficiency by exposing them to authentic literary texts accompanied by relevant skill-building exercises and tasks. The carefully chosen material is intended to sensitize students to cultural factors, promote their expansion of lexical knowledge and develop their interpretive strategies which they can then apply away from the classroom. The course targets the enhancement of the following skills: previewing and predicting, questioning, inferring the main idea, identifying the overall structure about the text, guessing the meaning of unknown words from the context, paraphrasing, summarizing, drawing conclusions, and reading critically by using a variety of different kinds of clues. The ultimate goal is to provide students with opportunities to increase their schematic as well as linguistic knowledge, exercise their reading skills, and build accuracy, fluency and automaticity in language acquisition.
Course Schedule:
Week 1 9/3 The Presence of the Word in TV Advertising
discussion of the text
9/7 The Presence of the Word in TV Advertising
further discussion of the text
Presentation: The Influence of TV Commercials
Week 2 9/10 The Presence of the Word in TV Advertising
Comprehensive Practice
9/14 Amusing Ourselves to Death
discussion of the text
Presentation: Social Function of Mass Media
Week 3 9/17 Amusing Ourselves to Death
further discussion of the text
9/21 Amusing Ourselves to Death
Comprehensive Practice
Week 4 9/24 College Pressures
discussion of the text
Presentation: General and Special Education
9/28 College Pressures
further discussion of the text
Week 5 10/1 National Day break
10/5 College Pressures
Comprehensive Practice
Week 6 10/8 Letter to a B Student
discussion of the text
Presentation: Excellence vs. Mediocrity
10/12 Letter to a B Student
further discussion of the text
Week 7 10/15 Letter to a B Student
Comprehensive Practice
10/19 Canadians: What Do They Want?
discussion of the text
Presentation: Value Systems of Different Cultures
Week 8 10/22 Canadians: What Do They Want?
further discussion of the text
10/26 Canadians: What Do They Want?
Comprehensive Practice
Week 9 10/29 A Review
11/2 Midterm Exam
Week 10 11/5 A Trip for Mrs. Taylor
discussion of the text
Presentation: Loneliness in Old Age
11/9 A Trip for Mrs. Taylor
further discussion of the text
Week 11 11/12 A Trip for Mrs. Taylor
Comprehensive Practice
11/16 Disney’s Worlds
discussion of the text
Presentation: The Value of Fairy Tales in Education
Week 12 11/19 Disney’s Worlds
further discussion of the text
11/23 Disney’s Worlds
Comprehensive Practice
Week 13 11/26 A Mild Attack of Locusts
discussion of the text
Presentation: Coping with Disasters
11/30 A Mild Attack of Locusts
further discussion of the text
Week 14 12/3 A Mild Attack of Locusts
Comprehensive Practice
12/7 A Visit to Walt Whitman
discussion of the text
Presentation: The Relationship between Celebrities
Week 15 12/10 A Visit to Walt Whitman
further discussion of the text
12/14 A Visit to Walt Whitman
further discussion of the text
Week 16 12/17 A Visit to Walt Whitman
Comprehensive Practice
12/21 What Life Means to Me
discussion of the text
Presentation: Metaphor, Personification & Metonymy
Week 17 12/24 What Life Means to Me
further discussion of the text
12/28 What Life Means to Me
further discussion of the text
Week 18 12/31 What Life Means to Me
Comprehensive Practice
1/4 A General Review
Week 19 1/11 Final Exam
Course Requirements:
This course will involve the student as a whole person in the classroom, allow for genuine response and develop student autonomy. There are no pre-determined answers to some of the designed tasks. Students will be encouraged to offer their individual interpretation or response instead of looking to the instructor for confirmation of “correct” answers. Discussions will be conducted through group and pair work so that students can negotiate the reconstruction of meaning with the text in an interactive way. Course requirements include active class attendance, intensive reading, enthusiastic participation in pair and group work, timely completion of assignments and critical presentation of course-related themes.
Grading:
Attendance: 10%
Contribution to Class Discussion 10%
Completion of Assignments 10%
Oral Presentation 10%
Midterm Exam 20%
Final Exam 40%
Recommended Reading:
Garner, Hugh. Hugh Garner's Best Stories. Markham, Ont. : Simon & Schuster of Canada, 1971.
Gray, Stephen. The Penguin Book of Southern African Stories. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985.
Kasdin, Steven. The Collected Jack London: Thirty-Six Stories, Four Complete Novels, a Memoir. New York : Dorset Press, 1991.
Kingsolver, Barbara.The Best American Short Stories, 2001: Selected from US and Canadian Magazines. Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2001
Lessing, Doris. The Sun between Their Feet. Michael Joseph, 1973.
Levine, Arthur. When Hope and Fear Collide: a Portrait of Today’s College Student. San Francisco: Jowwey-Bass Publishers, 1998.
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass: Selected Poems and Prose. New York: Doubleday, 1997.
Wober, J.Mallory. The Use and Abuse of Television: a Social Psychological Analysis of the Changing Screen. Hillsdale, N. J.: L. Erlbaum Associates, 1988