Academic English (Advanced)

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Course Overview

This course teaches students how to make an academic presentation. Specifically, they will learn how to turn a published academic paper into a high-quality, clear and concise presentation. Each week’s lecture builds on what was learned the week before, step-by-step, until students have a completed presentation. This “rough” presentation is then further refined and improved for a final in-class presentation.

Course Goals

The central aim of this course is to improve students’ presentation skills and to help students understand and create their own academic presentation based on a thorough understanding of 1) observations / problems 2) research questions / objectives, and 3) thesis statements / hypotheses. We will then use this basic framework to move to more advanced topics. Students will dissect and understand a work of their choosing as a basis for their presentation. Students will also learn how to write a proposal/abstract for their work. Students will present twice during the semester using the skills learned throughout the course. As necessary, most classes will contain a lecture dealing with specific aspects of presentation skills. Class activities and materials will be oriented around pair and small group work.

Course Schedule

Week
1	Course introduction, orientation; What is research?
2	The 3 most important elements of research; What is a thesis statement?
3	4 kinds of observations; 2 (+) kinds of research questions; 2 sequences of a research paper
4	Review; Investigate a real research paper; Things to consider when choosing a research paper
5	Student presentation: In focus
6	Student project: 1. Observation, 2. Research Question, 3. Hypothesis
7	Support for idea: How to support the thesis statement/hypothesis (Method, Results, Discussion)
8	Wrapping up: Conclusions; outlines
9	Presentation 1
10	Presentation 1 cont.
11	Feedback from presentation 1/ Using abstracts to organize your presentation; What is an abstract?; Building an abstract
12	Checking an abstract
13	From paper to presentation: Abstract to presentation
14	Presentation 2
15	Presentation 2 cont.

Lecture Materials

• Lesson 4: Presentation Skills

• Lesson 6: Presentation Skills

Grading and Assignments

Classwork/Participation: 20points, Homework: 20 points, Presentation(1): 20 points, Presentation(2): 20 points, E-learning (eFACE)-online only: 20 points

This lecture is provided under Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International.

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