COURSE SYLLABUS

 

PREREQUISITE:  Completion of ESL Level 4 or ESL Placement Test

 

Course Description: Welcome to ESL 081. Level 5 Reading (ESL 081) is a full semester high-intermediate/low-advanced academic sequence for students whose native language is not English. The focus for this course is developing reading skills for academic purposes.

 

Reading is the most important skill in achieving academic success.  Your grades in future courses will be determined to a great extent by your ability to read in English.  We will work on such areas as summarizing, comprehension, vocabulary development, analyzing and responding to literature and library research.

 

Course Objectives/student Learning Outcomes

·        To demonstrate developing competence in the comprehension of fiction and non-fiction and short academic texts

·        To apply reading comprehension strategies, such as skimming, scanning, finding main ideas, drawing conclusions to develop understanding of texts

·        To summarize the significant ideas and/or events orally or in writing

·        To learn to apply pre-reading strategies to activate background knowledge for comprehension of all texts

·        To respond to texts using various writing activities, such as freewriting and double-sided journals

·        To ask questions relevant to texts to facilitate discussion on a more abstract and critical level

·        To search on the Internet with key words and basic search engines to select relevant texts

·        To identify varied American cultural and historical themes to develop an awareness of multiculturalism through fiction and non-fiction

Information Literacy

By the conclusion of the semester, all students who pass this course will demonstrate, in at least one graded project, oral or written, that they are developing competency in the research process. This should include attending a library orientation, doing basic research, evaluating resources, and incorporating those sources into the project without plagiarism. Some of the sources should be electronic, including a database and the internet.   

Resources  (Required Materials):         

The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver  Click here for more information on these assignments.
Reader’s Choice 4  SPLIT EDITION Book 1 by Silberstein, Dobson, and Clarke

An All-English Dictionary

Two notebooks-1- a loose-leaf notebook for class notes and homework

                 2- a loose-leaf notebook for your reading journal.

 

All students must buy the books and bring them to every class meeting.

 

 

Attendance: Attendance is required.  More than two unexcused absences may jeopardize your final grade.  If you are absent, (this includes all students who have missed the first class and/or one or more classes) it is your responsibility to find out what was covered in class and make up all missed assignments.  This should be done before the next class session. You are expected to bring all books and journals to class every week. 

Assignments: You will read one book. You'll be receiving assignments every week which will include reading and keeping a double-entry reading journal.  Journals will be evaluated not only on the amount of journal entries and pages written, but also on the creativity applied to different journal entries.  It is extremely important to keep up with all assignments for we will have quizzes on the assigned readings every week. The assignments will be from on-line articles, The Bean Trees and Reader’s Choice. 

 

Week

Date

Chapters

Pages

1

September 4

Introduction to ESL 081

 

2

September 11

1- 2

1-35

3

September 18

3 - 4

36-67

4

September 25

5-7

68-113

5

October 2

8 - 10

114-157

6

October 9

11 - 13

158-199

7

October 14-17

14 - 17

200-246

8

October 23

Midterm exam

 



Exams: Besides weekly quizzes, you will have a midterm exam in October and a final exam on December 18th.  The last day of regular class is December 4th.  There will be no make-up for a quiz missed. The lowest quiz grade will be dropped if you did not miss any quizzes.

Final Grade: For this course students will be given letter grades: A   B+  B  C+  C  D+  D   F  UF   I   W

The final grade will be calculated according to the following:

 

Midterm Exam  15%

Final Exam        35%

Homework         30%    which consists of Journal Entries and various readings and written assignments

                                       (including class participation)

 Quizzes             20%.     

Withdrawal:  If you decide to withdraw from this class for whatever reason before the semester ends, be sure to withdraw officially-see a counselor and complete all paperwork.  Don't just disappear!  Last date to withdraw is October 31st.

Plagiarism: Plagiarism is the use of another person's work or ideas.  It is a very serious offense.  It will result in an F on the work submitted, and may result in failure of the course.  Policy Procedure as outlined in the Student Handbook will be followed for plagiarism and cheating.

 

Any student with a disability should contact the Disability Counselor in Cranford at:(908) 709-7164 

College Closed:  

Thanksgiving: November 22nd – November 25th

 

College open but no classes        November 21st and December 11th.

 

 

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