Speaking week nine

Progress review

Independent study review

At this stage of the course it can be difficult to maintain enthusiasm and interest, and you're probably looking forward to taking a well-earned break. However, it's vital that you maintain your independent study routine between now and the exams.

Work in groups of three, and exchange your ideas for keeping reading and listening practice interesting over the break.
1. What have you found most interesting and useful to read and listen to?
2. Which sources have helped you most improve your English?
3. In the reading class earlier this week we looked at popular science texts as an engaging and accessible reading source. Which texts did you choose as being ones that you'd like to read?
4. Where are you recording new language that you encounter in your independent reading, and how often do you review it?
5. At the end of the first term in week nine, we reviewed your progress in the four skills against the CEFR. Look back at the descriptors and decide which level you feel you've reached.

Wireless earphones allow you to review vocabulary while doing other things.

Analysing essay questions

We have written a lot over the two terms on a wide range of topics, and in each case we've had to logically organise information into paragraphs. Your future studies will have an even wider range of writing assignments waiting for you, so it's a good idea to start thinking about how you'd apply the skills we've developed to different tasks.

Look at the following essay question and decide what information you would include, and in what sequence:

To what extent has the United Nations learned from the failures of the League of Nations?
1. An overview of the United Nations and the League of Nations
2. A detailed description of the various branches of the United Nations
3. Reasons for the failure of the League
4. Lots of quotes from politicians
5. The advantages and disadvantages of the United Nations
6. Achievements of the United Nations.

Now discuss the following questions. What information would you include?

Socially responsible businesses cannot be competitive. Discuss.
Does ad-driven news compromise journalism?
Is total surveillance the price of security?

Researching essays and presentations

We've also looked at places to go to inform your work. Which of the following are sources that you would turn to in order to help you write an essay or presentation?

Independent study tools

Over the course of the two terms we have looked at a range of independent study tools such as Bristol Grammar, UEfAP, Sketch Engine for Language Learning and the Manchester Academic Phrasebank. Which ones, if any, have you found to be most useful, and which could help you prepare for the exams?
This week we have also explored the Sketch Engine as a way of finding out useful information about how words work in sentences. Revisit the Wordlist function and explore some of the other parts of speech such as nouns and adjectives.
- Do any of them surprise you?
- Choose two or three to look at more closely and find out how they're used in sentences. Click on the three dots and then choose either the Word Sketch or the Concordance function.
- If you're super-keen and would like to explore some more, try loading some of the other corpora that the Sketch Engine has available. From the dashboard, choose one that looks interesting. You'll have to do an institutional login here via the University of York using your ID.
  - For Law students there's the British Law Report corpus, alternatively the Brexit corpus might be relevant for State and Society, and the TED Talks Transcript show us all the favourite words and phrases of our beloved TED speakers.

Choose a corpus from the list.

Select one of the tools. N-Grams, for example, shows you the most common multi-word phrases that appear, and this is often more useful than a list of individual words.

If you choose the N-Gram tool, select how long you'd like the phrases to be. Usually 4 or 5 word phrases are the most useful to learn.

Independent study planning

In groups, draw up a study plan for the next few weeks for your Foundation modules. Think about when your exams and deadlines fall.
1. How much independent study time will you allocate each day to each module?
2. How do you intend to use your allocated study time each day?
3. Where do you study best? This could be a quiet part of campus, your accommodation, or even somewhere in town.
4. How could you minimise distractions? What's the longest you've ever had your phone switched off for? How long do you think you could survive without checking social media?

Teacher's notes

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