Friday, 19 August 2011

Help with project work


Brendan has kindly made the following recommendations from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University website.  These pages should be useful for Period 4 projects:



http://www2.elc.polyu.edu.hk/CILL/essay_checklist.htm   checklist of what you should have in your essay

http://www2.elc.polyu.edu.hk/CILL/tools/orgtool.htm   students can list and move their ideas around to organise the structure of their essays.

http://www2.elc.polyu.edu.hk/CILL/tools/ideaweb.htm    lets you organise your notes

PS Classic Recommended Reading : Week 6

The most important texts to look at for EAP sessions this week are issues of Essex Quarterly, a publication dedicated to the " latest achievements, news and developments" of Essex University.  The last four issues are available in pdf format via the university website, and you can also pick up paper copies from various locations around the campus.

Thursday, 11 August 2011

Suggested Self-study Material to follow EAP 3.18

Units 2-9 of Academic Vocabulary in Use


"Style", Chapter 2.10 from Bailey's Academic Writing


"Academic vocabulary", Chapter 3.2 from Bailey's Academic Writing

Wednesday, 10 August 2011

Suggested Self-study Material to follow EAP 3.17


“Facts, evidence, and data” Unit 24 from Academic Vocabulary in Use

“Examples”, Chapter 2.6 from Bailey

Tuesday, 9 August 2011

Wednesday, 3 August 2011

Tuesday, 2 August 2011

Suggested Self-study Material to follow EAP 3.12

“Re-writing and proof-reading”, Chapter 1.12 from Bailey

“Punctuation”, Chapter 3.9 from Bailey

Saturday, 30 July 2011

PS Classic Period 3 Week 3 Recommended Reading

With a lecture on the state of British politics on Tuesday, this week it will be a good idea to keep an eye on the news.  The BBC is a good starting point, but there are lots of publications that provide news, and you can find links to them all collected together on this useful British media website.

If you don't know anything about the current UK Government, it may be worth browsing the Who's Who guide either on the BBC or the Guardian.

Later in the week, you'll be reading about another piece of research conducted by Essex University staff.  You can read different reports on the research - in increasingly academic style - via the Essex University website, Environmental Science and Technology news pages, and the journal article research was first published in.

Thursday, 28 July 2011

Classic PS Group Writing Task

On Friday the 29th of July, you will complete a group writing task as an EAP assignment.  This is an opportunity for you to gain experience in working in a group to produce a piece of writing.  You will be able to submit your group essay as part of your EAP Self-Study Portfolio.

The essay question is:

Is the University of Essex right to set its tuition fees at £9000 per year?

Each member of your group should read one or more of the following texts.  You can decide together how you divide up the reading:


STUDENT A :

1. “From the Vice-Chancellor” and “Focus on Quality as fees set at £9,000”. Essex Quarterly. April 2011
2. “Vice Chancellor’s Update” Available online at https://www.essex.ac.uk/budget_prospects/vc_updates/240211.aspx [Retrieved 11 July 2011]

STUDENT B: 

Vasagar, J. (2011) “Fees will put teenagers off applying for university, say 42% of vice chancellors” The Observer, 12 June. Available online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jun/12/fees-chancellors-poll-universities?INTCMP=SRCH [Retrieved 11 July 2011]


STUDENT C : 

Paton, G. and Collins, N. (2011) "Ten universities could fail after £9,000 tuition fees” The Telegraph, 7 June  Available online at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8560874/Ten-universities-could-fail-after-9000-tuition-fees.html [Retrieved 11 July 2011]

EXTRA TEXT text:  BIS (2011) “Putting students at the heart of higher education”. Available online at   http://nds.coi.gov.uk/content/detail.aspx?NewsAreaId=2&ReleaseID=420160&SubjectId=2 [Retrieved 11 July 2011]


When you read your text(s), make clear notes that will be helpful to you when summarising content for your group.  After you have all summarised your texts for each other, you will need to plan an answer in response to the question.  You must then decide HOW you are going to write and edit your essay.  You can also decide on what you think is a suitable word limit, but you can ask your tutor for some advice on this.  

You should email your group text to your EAP tutor by 4pm on Friday the 29th of July.  Good luck, and enjoy the task!

Tuesday, 26 July 2011

Suggested Self-study Material to follow EAP 3.7

“Organising paragraphs”, Chapter 1.10 from Bailey

“Introductions and conclusions”, Chapter 1.11 from Bailey

Monday, 25 July 2011

Suggested Self-study Material to follow EAP 3.6

 “Nouns and the words they combine with” from Academic Vocabulary in Use, pp.28-29

“Nouns and prepositions” from Academic Vocabulary in Use, pp.38-39

 “Nouns and Adjectives”, Chapter 3.6 from Bailey

Friday, 22 July 2011

PS Classic Recommended Reading : Week 2

Obviously, you're not expected to read all of these texts. You'll probably see enough of them in classes!  If you want to do some further exploration, however, you could follow some of these links:

There are a couple of themes that will arise in week 2 that you may be interested in reading more about.  Follow the links below for further exploration:

Architecture: a text from the BBC website written by the author of How to Read Buildings


British History : from the BBC website


Scott Thornbury: lots of articles on the English language and English language teaching on Scott's website



PS Classic Bibliography : Week 2

The bibliography for texts used in week 2's EAP materials is as follows:

BBC (2011) “University Funding :  Q&A”. Available online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11483638 [Retrieved 30 March 2011]

BIS (2011) “Putting students at the heart of higher education”. Available online at   http://nds.coi.gov.uk/content/detail.aspx?NewsAreaId=2&ReleaseID=420160&SubjectId=2 [Retrieved 11 July 2011]

The British Museum and BBC Radio 4 (2011). ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects’. [Online]:http://www.britishmuseum.org/system_pages/holding_area/explore/a_history_of_the_world.aspx [Retrieved 14 June 2011]

Davidson Cragoe, C. (2008) How to Read Buildings : A Crash Course in Architecture. Herbert Press : London

Goldacre, B. (2008) Bad Science. London : Harper Collins

Oshima, A. and  Hogue, A. (2006) Writing Academic English. 4th edn.  White Plains, NY : Pearson Education

Paton, G. and Collins, N. (2011) “Ten universities could fail after £9,000 tuition fees” The Telegraph, 7 June  Available online at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8560874/Ten-universities-could-fail-after-9000-tuition-fees.html [Retrieved 11 July 2011]

 

Phillips, M. G., O’Neill, M. E. and Osmond, G. (2007) “Broadening Horizons in Sport History : Films, Photographs, and Monuments”. Journal of Sport History 34/2, p.278

Steed, A. and  McColgan, A. (2009) “Is it fair that women should pay less for their car insurance than men?” The Observer, 9th August. Available online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/aug/09/women-care-insurance-men  [Retrieved 7 July 2011]

Thornbury, S. (1998) “The Lexical Approach: A journey without maps? Modern English Teacher, 7, 1998, pp. 7-13.

Vasagar, J. (2011) “Fees will put teenagers off applying for university, say 42% of vice chancellors” The Observer, 12 June. Available online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jun/12/fees-chancellors-poll-universities?INTCMP=SRCH [Retrieved 11 July 2011] 

Suggested Self-study Material to follow EAP 3.5

“What is special about academic English” from Academic Vocabulary in Use, pp.10-11

“Comparing and contrasting” from Academic Vocabulary in Use, pp.96-97

Units 25-7 of Academic Vocabulary in Use, pp.58-63

“Numbers”, Chapter 2.8 from Bailey

Learn Higher

Open University

Nolo's Free Dictionary of Law Terms and Legal Definitions

Academic Phrasebank

Monash University Language and Learning Resources

Reading resources from Monash University

Thursday, 21 July 2011

Suggested Self-study Material to follow EAP 3.4

“Reading: finding suitable sources”, Chapter 1.2A from Bailey

“Reading: developing critical approaches”, Chapter 1.2B from Bailey

You can also choose your own articles to read, and fill in a self-study reading worksheet for your chosen text.  

Tuesday, 19 July 2011

Suggested Self-study Material to follow EAP 3.2

Units 2-9 from Academic Vocabulary in Use

“Academic vocabulary”, Chapter 3.2 from Bailey

Monday, 18 July 2011

Suggested Self-study Material to follow EAP 3.1

“What is special about academic English?” from Academic Vocabulary in Use, pp.10-11

“Study habits and skills” from Academic Vocabulary in Use, pp.50-51

Wednesday, 13 July 2011

The University of Essex : Related Reading

For information about the university:

Top Universities Website (proceed with caution!)

For more about Essex in general:





PS Classic Recommended Reading : Week 1

During the Presessional Programme, you will be asked to read and study texts on a range of themes and topics. If you want to prepare for lessons by checking that you can understand these texts, you can look at classroom material in advance via this blog.

Also, if you find any of the topics particularly interesting, you can use this blog to follow links to further reading around the subject.

In week one, we'll be looking at the themes of Culture Shock, Independent Study, Exercise, and The University of Essex. Click on the themes themselves for texts to read and explore.

Monday, 11 July 2011

Culture Shock

Some suggested texts and websites on culture shock:

International Students and Culture Shock on the UKCISA website.

UK Life and Culture from the British Council site, which also features a video of an international student talking about his experiences of life in the UK.

Tuesday, 26 April 2011

System

SystemAn International Journal of Educational Technology and Applied Linguistics, available via an Essex University login here.


Wednesday, 20 April 2011

A History of the World in 100 Objects


'High-brow’ audio recordings on a range of topics.  This Radio 4 project brings together history and culture in a study of 100 objects currently exhibited in the British Museum.

Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)

Compleat Lexical Tutor

Apple - iTunes



(requires iTunes installation + a means of playing mp3s, but a wealth of listening material and video here)


BBC Learning English

Online Computing Dictionary

TED


There's a wide range of talks and lectures on this site, many of which are quite short (some are under 6 minutes) - useful either if you're busy or if you want to do some really intensive listening practice.

An impressive and useful feature of the TED website is the way that interactive tapescripts are linked to recordings. You can see the tapescriptto the right of each video, and clicking on a word will take you to that point in the video...not only that, you can call the tapescript up as subtitles...in English or - if you're desperate for help - in a choice of alternative languages.

The Albert Sloman Library

BBC iPlayer

BBC

British Media Lonline

Presentation Planner

Plagiarism - Advice for students at the University of Essex

Phonetics by The University of Iowa

Academic Skills at Essex

Strategies for Critical Reading and Writing

HK Polytechnic University English Language Centre

UEA Anti-Plagiarism Quiz

Help Disk Writing Program

RMIT Learning Lab - Writing Skills

Writing Exercises for Engineers and Scientists

Reference Machine


Using the Academic Word List

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary and Thesaurus

Cambridge Dictionaries Online

Longman English Dictionary Online

University of Richmond Writer's Web

Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL)

The Internet Grammar of English

Natural Grammar

Specialty Dictionaries

Financial Times Lexicon