LEC offers pre-advanced and advanced courses, which generally serve three purposes: 1) as electives for students who want to continue to improve their English; 2) as an alternative to Integrated English 5 classes for certain faculties, such as law; 3) as required courses for the Minor Program students.
The Minor Program is a way in which students can take extra English classes to improve their English level and acquire an extra qualification. Seven out of 11 faculties and one course are involved: agriculture, economics (day and night course), education, engineering, law, letters, science and the matching program. Students take ten credits in four skills (listening, reading, writing, and speaking) and then eight credits in courses called ‘research project’ and ‘seminar’ (each course receives one credit per quarter so students need to take four quarter courses in each subject in order to attain eight credits).
The four skill courses are all part of the advanced classes (上級英語-joukyuu eigo) that are open to any student. It is likely that most students in an advanced class are not minor program students – it is a tough schedule and few students can complete all the classes. From 2012, students with a TOEIC score range of 400-495 are able to take pre-advanced English, and students with a TOEIC score of 500 or above can take advanced English. (Students matriculated between 2008 and 2011 need to have a TOEIC score of more than 435 to be able to take the advanced classes).
Below are brief descriptions/guidelines for the four skills courses and the research project and seminar courses. Please note that you are allowed flexibility in the skills-based advanced courses (because the required LEC curriculum is in transition to a more skills-based focus). For example, you can utilize topic-based English or content-based English in the advanced courses as long as you can cover and assess the assigned skills.
Listening
Students learn various skills to improve their ability to understand different types of listening materials such as stories, radio and TV programs, and academic lectures. These skills include actions to take before, during, and after listening such as predicting language, listening for keywords, and increasing awareness of intonation and pronunciation. Students also learn how to be better listening partners when talking with others in English.
Different teachers will choose different topics for practice but the following are some examples of ones that have been used in the past: future trends, lifestyles, political issues, relationships and health. In addition to listening and talking about these topics students can practice various listening skills, for example: predicting general content, identifying content words, identifying discourse markers, identifying stressed/unstressed words, checking understanding, paraphrasing or reflecting the main points of a speaker. Specific mini-exercises could be done every week on intonation and pronunciation, such as reduced forms, linking between words, and shifting stress.
Reading
Students learn different skills in order to become more efficient readers of various kinds of texts. Such skills include predicting language, coping with unknown words, and recording and remembering vocabulary. Students read graded readers at home to increase their reading speed, and practice more difficult texts in class.
For homework each week students read one graded reader and talk about it with other students in the lesson. The books can be borrowed from the A12 computer room (see computer rooms below), the university library, the L-café, and a room in D Building (to be decided). The rest of the lesson can be used to practice different reading skills and to look in detail at different text types. If the class is relatively small (less than 20 students) students can choose texts that will be read in the lesson – each student can find one short interesting text to share with their classmates. If the class is large then the teacher could choose the texts – from newspapers, the Internet, academic articles and other sources.
Various reading skills and topics could be threaded into lessons. Examples of reading skills would be: skimming, scanning, using dictionaries, and understanding parts of a text (blurb, contents, and bibliography). Examples of possible topics could be: students’ reading histories, discussions on what makes a good reader, or graded reader stories.
Writing
The focus for the writing courses is on the process writing approach, which includes brainstorming ideas, organizing, writing a first draft, peer editing, revising and proofreading. Students will improve their writing skills by writing in a variety of genres. In class students will learn about these genres and various writing strategies. They will also participate in discussions with other students and help them to revise and edit their work. Students should understand that plagiarism is not allowed.
Speaking
Students are encouraged to practice speaking in a number of different formats. These can range from talking with a partner or small group in a very informal way to making a short speech in front of the whole class on a prepared topic. The latter is a much more formal and pressured situation for students to go through, and they should be given advice and help in making such a presentation. These include ways to organize a speech, and how to improve their delivery through voicing, gesture and body language. For the more informal speaking opportunities, students are provided with (or choose themselves) texts on a variety of topics ranging from personal ones to more critical issues in the news.
Students are taught how to begin conversations, continue talk, and how to overcome problems when talk breaks down. They are also taught ways to increase their vocabulary and useful phrases, as well as practicing different aspects of pronunciation. By taking the speaking class students should increase their fluency and accuracy in speaking and have greater confidence to speak in many different kinds of situations.