Reading to Connect I: Building Fundamentals

Course Description

Reading to Connect (I): Building Fundamentals is an introductory course designed to provide students with fundamental strategies to read English academic texts more efficiently and effectively. Specific attention will focus on reading comprehension, vocabulary-building strategies, close-reading analysis, and applications of appropriate reading strategies to required readings in students’ disciplinary courses. In addition, crucial analytical skills in relation to various genres of texts will be introduced. All the in-class tasks and discussions are intended to foster students’ metacognitive awareness of reading and analytical skills. The instructional method includes assessing reading comprehension; expanding vocabulary lists; lecturing; and giving large and small group discussions/activities.

This course will consist of three modules and the content of each learning module is organized as follows:

Module 1: Reading for Meaning introduces effective strategies to facilitate the comprehension and development of academic and discipline-specific vocabularies.

Module 2: Reading for Interpretation equips students with analytical skills to improve proficiency in interacting with academic texts and lecture material, including making inferences and judgements; identifying organizational patterns, purposes, tones; evaluating facts, opinions, bias, and evidence; and reasoning.

Module 3: Reading Across Disciplines focuses on the development and application of appropriate reading strategies to discipline-specific content material in order to effectively comprehend and organize information by paraphrasing, annotating, mapping, note taking, and summarizing textbook material.

Course Objectives

The course adheres to the NTU educational goal for students to develop

CC 1:  independent judgment and ability to innovate
CC 2:  professional knowledge and skills
CC 3:  communicative and team skills

Course Intended Learning Outcomes (CILO): By the end of the course, students should be able to

CILO 1: acquire basic reading skills and sub-skills (CC 2 & 3);
CILO 2: expand and develop vocabulary through word recognition capabilities with systematic, explicit approaches (CC 1, 2 & 3);
CILO 3: effectively use context clues and other electronic reference materials to deter-mine the meanings of unfamiliar vocabulary and phrases (CC 1 & 2);
CILO 4: analyze and summarize information from texts, including main ideas, supporting details and evidence, points of view, biases, and arguments (CC 1, 2 & 3);
CILO 5: distinguish between facts and opinions and express personal judgment.

Weekly Schedule

Others

**英文程度為（或不及）CEFR B1, TOEIC 590, TOEFL iBT 59, IELTS 5.0**

(Required English language proficiency: CEFR B1, TOEIC 590, TOEFL iBT 59, IELTS 5.0 or below)

1. Students are required to attend all classes. No more than TWO absences are permitted.
2. Active participation in class discussions is required.
3. Plagiarism will not be tolerated.  Anything plagiarized automatically results in a zero for the course.

一、Required Reading (Please list the reading on a weekly basis)

The mandatory reading material consists of a compilation of online free-of-charge articles. There is no specific textbook for the course.

二、Extended Readings (Please list the reading on a weekly basis)

Additional readings will be assigned for in-class tasks.

Grading and Assessment