Reading LANE 212

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Ministry of Education

King Abdulaziz University

Department of European Languages and Literature

UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM

COURSE SYLLABUS

Course Title: READING I                            

Course Code: LANE 214                                                      

Prerequisite: NIL

Date: SECOND SEMESTER 2015

Number of credit hours: 3 hrs.

Building: 112/ 4^th floor/ Room 589

Instructor: Mr. Al Qarni Mohammed

E-mail: msalqarni@kau.edu.sa

Mobile: 0544241188

NOTE – By unanimous agreement of the department council, information in this Unit Outlines is subject to change prior to commencement of any teaching period.

I- Course Description:

This course aims at preparing students to learn and practice reading and comprehension skill at the beginning of their learning path in the English language department. It is specifically intended for new entrants at the High Beginning to Low Intermediate level. Designed by Heinle Cengage Learning and National Geographic Learning Corporation, this course offers a wide variety of relevant and authentic topics. It also covers a wide range of reading and comprehension skills such as reading for main ideas, extracting detailed information, and guessing the meaning according to the context of the topic. It focuses on building up knowledge based on the reading passages. It also provides students with most frequent and common words used in science texts. Gradually, it introduces students to academic English, which will be needed at a later stage of their study at the department. Chapters teach various reading skills, including, but not limited to, reading for main ideas as well as specific information. On the other hand, the ability to think critically has been including on the form of activities at the end of each unit. Student exercise how to evaluate, reflect, and express their position based on their personal judgment. Another aim is to equip students with vocabulary and terminologies that are used academic settings. It offers strategies to help students in words choice, the constructing short, compound and complex sentences. It also introduces students to different formats of academic English texts (e.g. journal articles, newspapers columns, and magazines, reports, etc.). Like any Communicative base Language course, grammatical features are taught implicitly. Upon completion, students should be able to demonstrate an acceptable level of reading competency required for Reading II - Lane 224.

A- Rationale:

The ability to read, understand, and analyze texts is a core knowledge in any given language. Students need working knowledge of a language before they can start exploring the descriptive knowledge of the grammatical structures, sound system, and lexicon. The reading stage comes as the main source of vocabularies. In fact, the ability to read deemed to be a fundamental skill to recognizing words, inferences and meaning. While working to improve their reading and comprehension skills, students need to be exposed to different kinds of texts. Hence, reading tends to be regarded as the initial point upon which all other important skills can actually be built. Students in this stage will consciously acquire awareness of how the language is written? How information is constructed in written forms? How texts are generally built? And most importantly, how to deal with academic texts as the main source of knowledge.

B-Course Objectives:

By the end of this course, students are expected to be able to:

1. Read for main ideas and underline major points
2. Read for specific information and details.
3. Demonstrate comprehension.
4. Identify key words, phrases, and points.
5. Summarize main ideas.
6. Define the tone of writers.
7. Extract meaning from the context.
8. Work in pairs and groups to enhance their collaborative skills.
9. Differentiate between diversities of texts.
10. Read and analyze with intelligible comprehension.
11. Read and understand complicated texts.

 C- Course Contents to be covered:

D- Evaluation:

E- Required texts:

Mari Vargo, and Laurie Blass. Pathways 3: Reading, Writing & Critical Thinking. Australia: Heinle Cengage Learning, 2012.

F- General course requirements and policy:

1- Aligning with the university rules and regulations, attendance is mandatory. Absenteeism affects students grading criteria. Students who are frequently absent may or will receive DN grade. Legitimate official alibies are the only accepted ones.

2. Class timing must be observed closely. Since the teaching period is 50 minutes per class, students have to report to class on time.

3- Students will receive a copy of the course syllabus at the beginning of the semester.

4 - Students are required to bring to class in addition to the textbook, a notebook and to jut down new or important information. They are also encouraged to bring an English-English dictionary such as Longman Dictionary or Word Power English – English –Arabic Dictionary.

5- Class participation is highly encouraged and appreciated by teachers. It is also considered toward grading at the end of the semester.

6- Students are expected to behave politely and respectfully and conduct themselves in accordance to the best academic practices and conventions. Misbehavior is not appreciated and will be subjected to the university rules.

7- Honesty is obligatory act in the classroom. Dishonesty, plagiarism, and cheating acts  will not be tolerated in any aspect of classwork.   

 G- Additional sources for teaching English as a second or foreign language:

www.usd.edu/engl/ESL.html

http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu/~jonb/

www.english-to-go.com/eslresources.htm

www.eslcafe .com

www.englishclub.com

http://occawlonline.pearsoned.com/bookbind/pubbooks

www.livetutoring.net/teachers.htm   

www.English.com

www.toefl.org

www.owcp.net/clc

www.tnis.net

www.easyenglish.com

www.tfel.net

THANK YOU