ANGLO-AMERICAN LANGUAGE 2

General description
Anglo-American Language 2 is part of the core courses of the undergraduate degree in Languages, Civilizations and Language Sciences at Ca’ Foscari University and aims at developing our students’ capacity to reflect on language. Anglo-American Lanuguage 2, following up from the entry level, Anglo-American Language 1, continues furthers the knowledge of linguistic structures and of US English, implementing communicative skills and developing competences at the C1 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. The course has a two-part structure, consisting in a module, taught by the Professor for a semester, and sessions of language practice taught by Language Teaching Assistants (CEL), and offers students the necessary metalinguistic competence and language proficiency to understand and use English in a variety of contexts, such as daily life, academic and specialist contexts (including complex literary texts and critical and theoretical essays). The module emphasizes competences that are part of the proficient language user profile at level C1, encouraging the use of English not only for social-communicative purposes but also for academic and professional purposes. Students work on reading, understanding, discussing, and thinking about meaningful and complex texts, finding their implicit meaning. They learn to produce well-structured, argumentative, and coherent essays that display the proper features of an academic paper. Learning outcomes (for all attending students) are evaluated on the basis of the following: active participation, a midterm, a critical essay (paper), and the final oral exam; for non-attending students: additional readings, a critical essay (paper), and the final oral exam.

To help you in the task, our “Course Reader” is supplemented by a handbook that I especially designed for Ca’ Foscari students, Words and Ideas (Writing the Academic Essay), in PDF format. The handbook has been inspired by the popular academic writing handbook They Say/I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing, by Gerald Graff and Kathy Birkenstein, which I have also uploaded on our Moodle page, under “Suggested Readings.”

Please note that Lingua Anglo-Americana 2 is linked to Esercitazioni Linguistiche (Lettorato). They are a year-long course delivered by our language teachers (Lettrici), and in order to take the final exam of Lingua Anglo-American you must have the level of your language skills assessed by our Lettrici. There are three levels: C(sufficient); B (average); A (good). Esercitazioni Linguistiche are meant to support you in the acquisition of the required levels of language competences through a range of activities devoted to grammar, lexis, listening, oral production, and so on. Their aim is therefore to assist you in building the necessary confidence to work through our Module’s materials.

Learning outcomes:

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

(knowledge and understanding)
Master theoretical and applied knowledge and comprehension of the English language as it is produced and used in Anglophone countries, whether as first or second language (L1, L2) or as a global means of communication or lingua franca (LS), in a variety of situations such as daily life and academic and specialist contexts with particular attention to morphology, syntax and the structure of discourse both from a diachronic and synchronic perspective (knowledge and understanding); read, understand, and interpret major texts in the modern and contemporary American cultural tradition; comment on arguments from a variety of texts, while attempting to formulate their own arguments in response to them;


(knowledge application and comprehension )
Master comprehension, analysis and production of multimodal texts in English, within the appropriate context(s) and in the appropriate linguistic register (applying knowledge and understanding); master the essentials of the academic essay of an expository nature; recognize and reproduce the structure and aims of academic writing in a short critical essay that applies the art of summarizing, the art of quoting, paragraphing.

(ability to gather and interpret relevant data and ability of judgment)
Know how to interpret and analyze complex texts in English (applying knowledge and understanding); identify key ideas and controversial issues; draw connections between different ideas and/or authors

(communicate information, ideas, problems and solutions)
Give reasons and explanations for opinions and judgments (making judgments); participate in a debate, take turn with peers, collaborate with peers in exploring an idea or solving a problem in response to a text or a question generated by the assigned readings.

(learning skills)
Develop communicative skills, especially with regard to appropriate interaction in English when discussing those extra-linguistic historical-political, social and cultural factors that might be responsible for linguistic variation in texts, and demonstrate the ability to use communicative strategies equivalent to Level C1 of the CEFR (communication skills); acquire the learning ability necessary to identify critical sources and digital resources to help expand on the ideas presented by the instructor’s module, as well as improve their language competence (learning skills); learning skills) build on the knowledge acquired in Anglo-American Language 2 to access profitably the next level course (Anglo-American Language 3), capitalizing on increased learner awareness and independent monitoring of learning success, with regard to both metalinguistic content mastery and individual language competence (learning skills).

Students must have passed Anglo-American Language 1. Level B2+ of the CEFR is required.

Module title: Anglo-American Language 2
Subtitle: Readings


“Lingua Anglo-Americana 2” introduces students to the reading, comprehension, analysis and interpretation of a set of American authors who have made a mark on the ways we understand the world we live in and make sense of our surrounding cultural environment. They are writers, artists, and critical thinkers who pass on to us some valuable tools to understand the present in its subtle connections with the past and beyond easy dualism and simplifications.

Esercitazioni Linguisticeh (language practice):
Further development of comprehension skills for oral and written texts
Development of speaking skills
- exercises leading to C1 level on CEFR

Course Reader

SUGGESTED TEXT:
Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, They Say/I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing (Norton, 2006), Selected chapters available in PDF on Moodle.
NB: This text is mandatory for non-attending students only.

Esercitazioni Linguistiche/Language practice with Language Teaching Assistants (CEL):
• Day, Skerritt. O Language Hub Advanced COURSEBOOK C1, MacMillan Education, 2020.
• Vince, Michael. LANGUAGE PRACTICE FOR ADVANCED. STUDENTS' BOOK. 4th edition. Macmillan.

Suggested dictionaries:
MERRIAM-WEBSTER'S COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY. Springfield: Merriam-Webster.

Picchi, Fernando. GRANDE DIZIONARIO INGLESE-ITALIANO E ITALIANO-INGLESE.
Oxford: OUP.

OXFORD ADVANCED LEARNER'S DICTIONARY. Oxford: OUP, with iWriter CD Rom

MACMILLAN ENGLISH DICTIONARY FOR ADVANCED LEARNERS WITH
CD-ROM: Oxford: Macmillan Education.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND EVALUATION
The course requirements are the elements of evaluation.

Please note that Lingua Anglo-Americana 2 is linked to Esercitazioni Linguistiche or Lettorato. Esercitazioni Linguistiche consist in a year-long course delivered by our Lettrici or language teachers. They are mandatory. Only students who earn an assessment of their language skills can take the final exam of Lingua Anglo-Americana 2.
The aim is to offer support to students in the acquisition of linguistic competence; to assist you in building confidence as you work with the Module materials; and to do all this through a range of activities devoted to grammar, lexis, listening, oral production, and so on.

Lecture
Discussion
Peer-to-peer learning sessions

English

The course materials and debates will help students gain greater awareness of social inequality.

oral

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Human capital, health, education" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development