Intensive Reading for English Majors (1)
	INSTRUCTOR: Yirui                E-MAIL: yiruii@sohu.com FOR STUDENTS: 1st year           CLASSROOM HOURS: 6 hours / week
	A. OBJECTIVES ● To improve students’ general language proficiency through exercises in comprehension and text appreciation and promote students’ all-round abilities in listening, speaking, reading, and writing through various class activities. ● To enlarge students’ vocabulary by about 2000 words. ● To consolidate students’ knowledge in the usage of key words, idiomatic expressions, sentence structures, collocations and other grammar items, and help students use them correctly and appropriately in communication. ● To help students work independently by emphasizing pre-class work and the use of English-English dictionaries.        B. ORGANIZATION ● The course will require six hours a week. The first three hours are devoted to the text: analysis of the theme, structure, style, and important language points. The fourth hour is devoted to student presentation or oral discussion, summary and retelling. Students will be asked to give opinions on the content of the text to strengthen their understanding and their ability in speaking. The last two hours are used for the weekly quiz and exercises and for a check on students’ review. ● Focus on oral participation is emphasized in the first three weeks of the first semester. Oral presentations are held on the first three units. ● The extensive of text B and simplified novels are recommended and encouraged. An extensive reading week is held in the latter half of the first semester for students to report to the class the books they read.         C. TEXTBOOK Yang Limin (chief ed.), Contemporary College English, Book I and Book Two (Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2002)        D. TOPICS Orientation  Lesson 1: Half a Day (weekly quiz 1) Lesson 2: Going Home (weekly quiz 2) Lesson 3: Message of the Land (weekly quiz 3) Oral presentation of topics on the 3 texts Lesson 4: The Boy and the Bank Officer (essay question 1) Lesson 6: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street (weekly quiz 4) Lesson 7: Mandela’s Garden (reading comprehension 1) Mid-term Exam (oral and written) Lesson 8: My Personal Manager (weekly quiz 5; essay 2) Lesson 10: The Green Banana (weekly quiz 6) Lesson 11: The Midnight Visitor (weekly quiz 7; essay 3) Lesson 12: The kindness of Strangers (weekly quiz 8) Reading Week (two-hour presentation) Lesson 13: Christmas Day in the Morning  (weekly quiz 9; essay 4) Lesson 14: After Twenty Years  (weekly quiz 10) Lesson 15: Touched by the Moon (reading comprehension 2) Revision (a two-hour session for questions) Final Exam (oral and written)        E. SUPPLEMENTARY READING: Yang Limin (chief ed.), Contemporary College English Companion Reader , Book I and Book Two (Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2002).        F. ASSESSMENT: Grading is broken down into the following components, Attendance and Class Participation 10% Weekly quiz 10% Mid-term Exam 30% Final Exam 50%     ● Attendance Policy: Students are expected to attend every class. If unable to attend a class, students should notify the lecturer concerned in advance. ● Classroom Participation: Students are expected to participate actively in all classroom discussions and activities, both as a speaker and as a listener. ● Weekly Quiz: It includes sections of spelling, dictation, completing sentences based on key language points and grammatical items, and answering text-related essay questions. Each lecturer can choose six to eight out of the total ten quizzes of the semester for grading. A 100-point grading system is adopted. ● Mid-term and Final Exams: Exams consist of both oral and written sections. Oral exams provide topics from the texts for students to make oral presentations. Written exams include spelling, dictation, cloze, sentence completion, reading comprehension and essay questions.