ESOL 830 Syllabus for Fall 2006
Teacher: Daniel O'Connell Course: ESOL830 English For Speakers of Other Languages III Section: AA Room: PH 314 Time: 8:10-9:50 MWF 8:10-9:25 TTH Units: 6.0 ( non-transferable and not applicable to AA degree) Office: 5110 Office Hours: 10:00-10:30 M,W,F, or by appt. E-Mail: oconnelld@smccd.net Telephone: (510) 378-7301 ext. 19179 to leave message or (510) 647-4202 (LALR Office) Website : www.smccd.net/accounts/oconnelld/
Texts: Mosaic I: A Reading Skills Book . (4th ed.) by Wegmann, B., and Knezevic, M.P.
Mosaic I: A Communicative Grammar (4th ed) by Wegmann and Sparenta
Materials:
The Pearl. Steinbeck, J.
One subscription to News For You, a newspaper for ESL students
One hour-by-arrangement (HBA) folder
2 folders to collect handouts, finished essays and homework
2 Steno notebooks
1 computer floppy disk, formatted for your computer
Recommended: American Heritage ESL Dictionary
Mosaic I: Listening/Speaking . (4 th ed.) by Hanreddy, J., and Whalley, E.
Cassette tapes for copying Mosaic I: Listening Speaking (can be copied in the Learning Center behind counter)
Placement : Appropriate scores on LOEP placement test (raw score 27-39, scale score 98-128) are required for students testing into 830. This course is designed for students who have completed ESOL 820 or 821/822 with a C or better. Proof of eligibility must be shown before beginning course.
Attendance: Attendance is critical to doing well in this course. Coming to class everyday and on time is necessary for this class. If you miss more than 10 classes, it will affect your grade and you can be withdrawn from the roster. If you choose to withdraw from the course, it is your responsibility to drop from the class, either using WebSMART, SMART, or by going to the Student Services Office. Two late arrivals will be counted as an absence. Coming late or leaving early regularly will have a negative effect on your grade. Our time together every morning is valuable, so let's make the most of it.
Final Exams : The final exams will be given early, during the last week of regular classes. This semester the in-class writing exam will be given on Wednesday, Dec 6th . The exam will be an in-class essay on a topic given on that day. Instruction on how to prepare for the exam and a practice exam will be given in the last week of classes. See "Grades" section below for further details. The grammar final will be the next day, Thursday, Dec 7 th , and will be limited to the grammar lessons of the semester.
Course Description: This course is for advanced students who have studied the grammatical structures of ESO 820, or 821 and 822 and have acquired conversational fluency and basic reading and writing skills. Emphasis is on critical reading, sentence combining , oral exchange, and paragraph writing.
Course Objectives: By the end of this course, students will be able to write an essay-length composition discussing a main idea. Writing will show fluency in spite of errors and is comprehensible to an average native-speaker, although ideas may be underdeveloped and lack organization.
Student Learning Objectives: Upon completion of ESOL 830, students will be able to:
• Writing
• Show fluency through writing an organized composition demonstrating an awareness of paragraph formation and sentence structure.
• Reading
• Apply reading strategies to texts written in the 6000 high-frequency core words of everyday written English and compose summaries of and responses to that text.
• Speaking
• Explain, summarize, and clarify information orally from a source such as a graph, diagram, or map, demonstrating developing oral intelligibility.
• Report on an event or incident, giving details or reasons and advocating or negotiating for self or others.
• Listening
• Comprehend and follow lectures and multi-step oral instructions spoken in standard English at a moderate speed.
• Identify vital information in a report (e.g. television or radio) inferring emotional content of the spoken message and extracting meaning from idiomatic speech.
Course work: Be prepared to spend time during the week and over weekends completing course work. ESOL is a six-unit course, which is twice the amount of units of a regular Reading/Writing or Listening/Speaking course. So the amount of work for this course is also twice as much as a three-unit course. We will finish the entire reading textbook and the grammar textbook, as well as selected assignments from each chapter of the listening textbook.
In addition to work from the textbooks, book reports will also be assigned. The first book assignment will be John Steinbeck's The Pearl . Later in the semester, students can choose book assignments. These should be about 60-80 pages long, from the library's special reserve section, and are coded yellow or red for this course. You will need a library card and will need to follow the library's guidelines.
Newspaper reading will also be an area of focus in this course. All students will begin this study with a biweekly newspaper, specially edited for the ESL learner. In the last six weeks of the semester, articles from newspapers for native speakers will be assigned. Students will keep a newspaper journal, an ongoing collection of articles, summaries, and commentary. As many as three articles a week will be assigned.
Based upon current issues of today, we will create an ESL newsletter. This will be an editorial summary of events you're interested in which we have read about in the text and articles.
Also, Be prepared to set aside an hour each week in the learning center. There is a required hour by arrangement in The Learning Center (The TLC, Building 5, first floor), which has resources for students to improve their skills. These resources include tutors, books, websites and software.
Grades: Grading will be: A (89.5-100%), B (79.5-89.5%), C (69.5-79.49), or D (below 69.5%), which is not passing, based on attendance, in-class work, quizzes, writing assignments, and other graded assignments such as homework. 20% of the final grade will be based on the in-class final. In order to pass this final exam, students will write an essay that shows some basic organization. It may have distracting grammar but not so severe as to interfere with content.
Grades for all coursework will be provided online at the instructor's website-- www.smccd.net/accounts/oconnelld/ . Students will have access to their grades as they develop. Please use this website to keep track of your progress. Your grade is the percentage created by dividing the sum of all denominators by the sum of all numerators.
Students are expected to take all tests and hand in all the homework for the class. Contacting the teacher about missing class work is each student's responsibility. Please contact me in class, through e-mail, or call a classmate if you miss something so that a makeup date can be arranged. Missing class work without notifying the teacher will result in a zero grade for the assignment.
The last day to drop semester length classes without record is September 8 th , and the last day to withdraw from semester length classes is November 14 th .
Extra credit : Students can make-up points for missed class work and poor scores by attending workshops, lectures, and special writing and field assignments, arranged through the instructor.
Students with Special Needs In coordination with the DSPS office, reasonable accommodation will be provided for eligible students with disabilities. If you do not yet have an accommodation letter, please contact the DSPS office at (650) 738-4280.