大一英文(二)

The goal of this course is practical: to improve students’ English skills and prepare them for future courses in our dept. There is no single effective shortcut to achieve this goal and you will just have to practice more. In this course, we will mainly focus on developing the four core aspects of English skills: • Listening: you will listen to/watch many TED talks throughout this semester. The talks in the TED projects are well designed and clearly delivered, and you will have better listening skills through repeated exposure to a variety of talks. • Speaking: not only that you will listen to others’ talks, but you will also make your own speech (let’s call it “TED NCTU”) and present it at the end of this semester. We will collectively evaluate your talk together. • Writing: you will keep writing throughout the semester. Plus, you will write an in-depth term paper based on your talk (less than 5 pages); a project proposal will be due on 5/9 and you will submit the work by the end of the semester. • Reading: there will be occasional readings of (research) articles and essays and you will write a summary/critic on those readings. We assume a fairly high level of English reading skills for the students in our class, and this part won’t be the major focus of this course. Disclaimer: this course will not cover topics such as English grammar, difficult vocabulary, or composition.

Week Dates Topics Subtopics In-class quiz Assignments 1 3/07 Introduction HW1 (due 3/14) 2 3/14 Varieties of English Bias in accent perception (Rubin 1992) HW2 (due 3/21) 3 3/21 English in social context (Labov 1972) Quiz 1 4 3/28 No lecture Quiz 2 5 4/04 Spring break – no class 6 4/11 How to pronounce English vowels – Recording Quiz 3 HW3 (due 4/25) 7 4/18 My English vowels – Vowel plot, Dialects of English Vowels Quiz 4 8 4/25 English prosody – stress and vowel reduction Quiz 5 HW4 (due 5/02) 9 5/02 Difficult English consonants, Dialects of English Consonants Quiz 6 HW5 (due 5/9) 10 5/09 How to present Presentation skills Quiz 7 11 5/16 How to write Writing skills Quiz 8 HW6 (due 5/23) 12 5/23 Copyrights (Quiz 9) 13 5/30 Final project meeting (GD I) 1 – 6pm HC3, R412 14 6/06 Group Debates I Final project meeting (GD II) 1 – 6 pm HC3, R412 15 6/13 Group Debates II 16 6/20 Final paper submission

Participation and attendance: 5% In-class quiz: 40% Homework assignments: 30% Individual presentation: 15% Final paper: 10% Participation and attendance (5%) • If you must be absent from class, you take responsibility for the absence. Notify us in advance through the university official leave system. Review the slides posted on E3, get notes from classmates and ask for help from the instructor or the TAs. • If you continue to be late on homework or if you miss classes frequently, I’d ask you to withdraw this course. I won’t go over the course materials with you for the class that you missed randomly. You may take the course again when you are ready to commit. • If you have to chat with your friends, you will be asked to leave the classroom. You don’t need to sit in the classroom while interfering with other classmates. • You will sit with many different people in the classroom throughout the semester − don’t be afraid working with unfamiliar faces, but be ready to enjoy it! In-class quiz (40%) There will be no exams in this course, but you will be tested regularly throughout the semester in a form of small quizzes (8 quizzes in total). They will account for 40% of your final grade (approximately 5% per each quiz). You will watch/listen to the TED talks of the week (5-7 talks a week) and you will be tested on one of the talks chosen randomly by the instructor. This means that you will have to study all the talks of the week carefully before you come to class. The quizzes will cover every aspect of the talk: vocabulary (words, expressions, etc.), talk summary, text analyses, logic, translation, and possibly many more. Homework Assignments (30%) Throughout the course, there will be six assignments that you will hand in for credit. They will account for 30% of your final grade (5% per each homework assignment). • Collaboration is permitted on homework exercises, but you must write up your own assignment individually, and you must assume full responsibility for your own understanding of the course material. Copying others’ work is plagiarism and there will be zero tolerance for the academic dishonesty. • Failure to complete these assignments by the due date (before class starts) will result in grades of zero, unless you have a valid excuse accompanied by a note from a university or medical official. You will be given plenty of time to do those assignments and projects in advance, so plan for last minute problems by setting your own earlier deadline. • Type your homework; handwritten homework will not be accepted. Individual presentations (15%) This course will progress toward developing your individual TED talks. Everything that we do in and outside class will be helpful in some ways for you to give a better talk at the end of the semester. You will be asked to choose one of the topics of your interest, do sufficient research, organize your talk, and give an effective talk in front of your classmates. Possible topics are not limited but may include things like: e.g. Bias, gender, equity, language, environment, death (penalty, euthanasia, suicide), religion, politics, higher education, etc.). You will discuss with the instructor about your topic prior to the presentation. You will be both a presenter of your talk (10%) and a judge for others’ talks (5%). We will figure out the logistics in detail later on. Final paper (10%) Based on your research for your talk, you will write an in-depth article for the term paper (less than 5 pages); a term project proposal will be due on 5/9 and you will submit the work by the end of the semester.

No textbooks. Some occasional readings will be posted on E3. Instead of focusing on selected textbooks, we will make use of TED talks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TED_(conference)), a free online platform for talks on a variety of issues.

地點

HC412, Humanities 3

時間

Wed 1:30pm – 3:30pm or by appointment

聯絡方式

sangimleekim@nctu.edu.tw