Refining Your Communication Skills
Performance Schedule—Part I, Written Communication
Six three-hour sessions
Eighteen instructional hours
Course Objective
This course will help participants become aware of the strengths and weaknesses in their writing, begin to apply the principles they have learned in class to their own writing, focus on the trouble spots in American English that are common to nonnative speakers, and develop the confidence needed to improve their effectiveness in both the written and spoken word.
Specific Course Goals
Participants will learn to
- incorporate the prewriting stage
- use lists
- structure paragraphs
- unify a paragraph
- revise a document
- edit the work of a peer
- identify general vs. specific ideas
- organize comparative essays
- understand introductions
- cluster ideas
- write conclusions
- write a coherent paragraph
- improve the flow of ideas
- use cause and effect connectors
- identify subjects and verbs
- identify and avoid fragments and run-on sentences
- use proper subject-verb agreement
- use pronoun-antecedent agreement
- use correct punctuation
- avoid fuzzy pronoun reference
Course Concept
The course will emphasize learning by doing, focus on building writing skills, and offer a process approach to writing documents. To help participants improve their confidence in using the English language, the instructor will focus on both writing skills and grammar skills. In addition, participants will practice the sounds, stresses, and intonations of American English.
The instructor serves as motivator, resource person, and evaluator of student progress.
Materials
The contractor will provide Choices: Writing Projects for Students of ESL by Carole Turkenik
Performance Schedule—Part II, Accent Reduction
Individual 20-minute sessions
Maximum of three instructional hours per individual participant
Course Objective
The objective of this part of the course is to improve the ability of participants to be aware of and reduce their accent. Each participant will work with the instructor individually.
Specific Course Goals
Each participant will record an audio tape that will be evaluated by the instructor. The instructor, in turn, will create an individual program for each participant. The course will include rate of speech, work with specific word lists, role playing, and some grammar “hot spots” (such as plurals of nouns and verbs, homonyms and homophones, and the verb “to be).
Course Concept
Participants will work at their won skill level and at their own pace. The instructor will serve as motivator, resource person, and evaluator of student progress.
Materials
Materials will be developed by the instructor for each individual participant.