GDIC2002K Eng Specific Academic Purpose

Academic Year 2024/2025

GDIC2002K – English for Specific Academic Purposes is designed for Stage 2 students who are undertaking a dual undergraduate degree programme at Guangzhou-Dublin International College (GDIC). The module aims to help students develop the Academic English skills that they will need in order to complete their programmes in Biological Sciences, Food Quality & Safety, and Horticulture.

The module focuses on students’ productive skills, with a particular emphasis on writing and speaking in response to academic texts. As such, students also build on work done in Semester One on reading and summarizing discipline-specific articles, taking notes, and paraphrasing. Likewise, they further practise taking notes from lectures and summarising key points.

In their writing classes, students learn how to plan, research, and produce an academic essay or report. They learn how to source and select appropriately academic articles, to critically assess what they read, and to summarize and evaluate other authors’ arguments in their own writing. They extend their understanding of citation and referencing, and of how to avoid plagiarism. This work is supported by timed writing tasks, designed to help students build confidence in writing without relying upon translation software or other aids. Students also develop their spoken production skills through short subject-specific presentations followed by question-and-answer sessions to develop their interactive skills.

It is expected that autonomous student learning – particularly sourcing and reading texts – will take place outside scheduled class hours. In addition to developing language skills, classroom activities support the development of students’ academic study competences and independent language learning strategies. Students are often expected to work collaboratively in class.

A particular emphasis of the module is the development of critical thinking skills. Students are encouraged to give a rationale for their decisions, to question the arguments they encounter, and to trust their own independent thinking.

Classes are taught in small groups of up to 30 students (with Chinese teachers) and 15 students (with international teachers). They are grouped according to the students’ specific disciplines. While many classroom tasks and activities are relevant to all academic disciplines, much of the content will be discipline-specific, and the main purpose of the module is to enable students to write and speak in English about concepts and practices within their own subject areas.

Students are assessed in the following areas: continuous assessment (based on class tasks completed throughout the semester) (10%); a mid-term written assignment (an annotated bibliography) (15%), a presentation giving a critical evaluation of an academic article (15%), an end-of-semester essay of 1,500 words (35%), and two listening-into-note-taking exams (one at mid-term and one at the end of the semester)(20%).

Materials and assessments for the module are designed with reference to C1 descriptors of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) and The British Association of Lecturers in English for Academic Purposes (BALEAP)’s ‘can-do’ framework for EAP syllabus design and assessment.