Class time will be devoted to activities that allow students to practice and interact in English. To successfully complete the course, students must prepare the assigned homework prior to class and, while in class actively participate in class discussions and pair/group work. Students’ final grades are determined by the following course components:

Ÿ Participation (homework, class notes, class discussion, and attendance): 15%

Ÿ Online course: 15%

Ÿ Individual presentation: 20%

Ÿ Final group presentation: 20%

Ÿ Reading/writing exam: 30%

Participation

Your participation grade will be based on your attendance, homework preparation, and the contribution you make to the learning experience of others. Contribution includes your in-class questions to the instructor, insights and comments regarding class content, answers to the instructor’s questions, and reactions to other students’ contributions. Students will be expected to take notes in class and turn in those notes at the end of the class to be counted for participation credit.

Attendance: Students must attend class. Those who miss three classes or more will fail the course. If a student is late three times for a class, it will count as an absence. Students may make up an absence by writing a reflection paper, which must be sent to the teacher’s email as an attachment.

Homework: Students are expected to complete the assigned readings for homework, including short stories and teacher-assigned articles. Students must write a reading journal for homework to track their learning progress with both new vocabulary and summary of the content. In addition, students will be assigned two topics for research, in which they must find an English article online related to the assigned topic and document their observations in their reading journal. In class, students will learn the vocabulary in context and discuss the content more in detail; therefore, homework is designed to be preparation for in-class activities. For out-of-class writing assignments, the grading rubric is available on the class Moodle.

Class work: Students will take notes in class as exercises in listening and speaking. Students mostly play the role of a reporter, interviewing each other in groups or pairs and writing information from what they gather. They will then use that information to construct observations as if they were conducting their own research and writing conclusions based on their findings.

Online course

Students will find the online course on Moodle. They will be assigned the first three units of the course (Unit 1 Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions; Unit 2 Stereotypes; Unit 3 Education), including watching the videos, completing the online quizzes, and writing answers to discussion questions. Students will be graded on their performance on the online quizzes and effort on written homework based on the discussion questions. The writing part of the assignment (writing assignment 1) includes writing intelligent responses to a discussion question for each unit. The final written homework portion of this course (writing assignment 2) will come in the last two weeks of the semester when students will listen to the Voices Around the World interviews and write responses to the answers of the interviewees. The total grade of the online course consists of quizzes, writing assignment 1 (discussion questions), and writing assignment 2 (voices around the world and course conclusion).

Individual presentation

For the first presentation, students will share one of the articles that they found online as part of their homework assignments in the semester. They will summarize the article and discuss their observations and opinions based on the content. In addition, they will also share a personal experience based on one of the topics that we have discussed in previous lessons. For this particular presentation, students are not allowed to use PPT so as to focus complete attention on their speaking skills. The grading rubric for the presentation will be available on the class Moodle. 

Final group presentation

For the final presentation, students in groups will make a cultural presentation (with PPT) with comparisons of the culture of a country to the culture of Taiwan. Students will be assigned a different region of the world and present a popular city from that region to the class. Students will share information related to that city in regards to culture and travel. Each student presents a different aspect of the city, such as culture and customs; what to see and do; what to eat and drink there; popular sports in this city; experience visiting; etc. The grading rubric for the presentation is the same as for the individual presentation and is available on the class Moodle.

Reading/writing exam

The content of this test is from the short stories and selected teacher-assigned articles that students have read and interacted with in the course. There will be questions based on the content of the readings, in which students need to write answers in complete sentences. There will also be a longer writing component, in which students must write a one-paragraph composition based on the topic of the article.

• Short stories (The International House Story Series) and the articles will be distributed on Moodle in PDF files for homework. Students may choose to print out the readings or use the e-version on their phone or tablet. Currently, the readings are available to students on Moodle free of charge.


• Supplementary readings: To be distributed in class.


• Resources:

VoiceTube: https://tw.voicetube.com

BBC Learning English: http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish

TED talks: https://www.ted.com/talks

LTTC BESTEP: https://bestep.tw/