English: Comprehension and Written Expression

GENERAL
a. Train students as future teachers in the learning and practice of written skills: Reading and writing in daily communicative and academic contexts.
b. To master the competences enumerated in the previous section and to be able to teach them at primary school level.
Besides, this subject is intended to train students in:

DECLARATIVE KNOWLEDGE
a. To know how to teach and learn foreign language written skills in multilingual contexts.
b. To get to know the nature of multilingual situations in the class and their relation to the teaching and learning of languages according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).
c. Master the basic contents of language methodology from a multilingual perspective.
d. Knowledge of foreign languages, especially written skills in English, starting from B1.2 and trying to reach B2.

SKILLS AND KNOW-HOW
a. To be able to apply linguistic theoretical knowledge and functions to reading and writing in English.
b. Analyze educational multilingual models and apply the knowledge obtained to concrete situations.
c. Solve problems related to the teaching and learning of English written skills.
d. Encourage foreign language communicative skills in the students.

EXISTENTIAL COMPETENCE
a. Show a respectful and positive attitude towards linguistic diversity as an expression of cultural heritage.
b. Value the importance of these attitudes in the teaching of languages and their cultures.

Conceptual, procedural, and attitudinal contents will be introduced and developed throughout the course. As regards conceptual contents, the receptive skills of reading and writing will be developed taking linguistic, sociolinguistic, and pragmatic competence into account.
Within linguistic competence, attention will be paid to the introduction, revision, and acquisition of a deeper knowledge about grammatical structures and notions (verb tenses, frequency adverbs, relative clauses, questions, the passive voice, reported speech, conditionals, non-finite clauses, etc.) with a view to helping students do things with language using written skills (describe and narrate, ask for and transmit information, and so on). In addition, a variety of semantic fields (tourism and leisure, mass media, the Arts, science and technology, and such) as well as topics of morphological and semantic interest (i.e. word classes, false friends, idioms, and stylistic variation) will be considered in order to help the students further develop and interiorize this vocabulary.
Sociolinguistic competence will be developed through the acquisition of knowledge about set formulae for everyday interaction, register differences, social relation, how to express politeness, how to recognize stylistic and geographical variation, among others, as well as about certain important cultural references.
Pragmatic and strategic competence will be achieved by training students so that they will be able to construct, organize and connect oral and written discourse, use strategies to enhance verbal communication and recognize genres and subgenres (i.e. narrations, descriptions, instructions) and so on.
Concerning procedural contents or skills, students will develop both productive (writing) and receptive (reading comprehension) skills in an integrated way in order to reach the expected level of communicative competence. Lastly, as regards attitudinal contents, students will learn to appreciate linguistic diversity, to trust their possibilities for self-learning and learn from their errors so as to develop open-minded, collaborative, and respectful attitudes about learning and teaching.


METHODOLOGICAL CONTENT
Students will be acquainted with the basic approaches and methodology for ELT in the primary classroom. Within this general framework, special attention will be paid to the teaching and learning of the written productive and receptive skills, classroom management, planning and assessing, the use of didactic materials, and ICT resources.

BASIC BIBLIOGRAPHY

Latham, C. et al. (2014). English File. 3rd Edition, Upper-intermediate. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Berk, Lynn M. 1999. English Syntax: from Word to Discourse. New York: Oxford University Press.
Carstairs-McCarthy, Andrew. 2018. An Introduction to English Morphology.: words and their structures. 2nd Ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
McDonald, Christine. 1992. English Language Project Work: Studies in English Language. Palgrave Macmillan.
Peck, John and Martin Coyle.1999. The Student’s Guide to Writing: Grammar Punctuation and Spelling. Houndmills: Macmillan.
Strunk, William Jr. 2018. The elements of style. 1st Ed. Vancouver: Spectrum Ink Publishing.
Zinsser, William. 2016. On writing well: the classic guide to writing nonfiction, 7th Ed. New York: Harper Perennial.

COMPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Calhoun, Emily. 1999. Teaching beginning reading and writing with the picture word inductive model. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
Clipson-Boyles, Suzi. 1998. Drama in primary English teaching. London: David Fulton Publishers.
Garton, Sue and Fiona Copland, Eds. 2018. The Routledge Handbook of Teaching English to Young Learners. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge.
Gentry, Richard et al. 2014. Fostering writing in today's classroom. Huntington Beach, California: Shell Education, 2014.
Herschensohn, Julie, and Martha Young-Scholten. Eds. 2013. The Cambridge handbook of second language acquisition Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hinkel, Eli. Ed. 2004. Teaching academic ESL Writing: Practical Techniques in Vocabulary and Grammar. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Johnson, Jane et al. 2007. Developing Teaching Skills in the Primary School. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill Education.
Ormiston, Meg, et al. 2018. NOW classrooms, grades K-2: lessons for enhancing teaching and learning through technology. Bloomington, Indiana: Solution Tree Press.
Peck, John and Martin Coyle.1999. The Student’s Guide to Writing: Grammar Punctuation and Spelling. Houndmills: Macmillan.
Ryan, Denise. Ed. 2014. Reading and responding: a guide to literature. Huntington Beach, California: Shell Education.
Williams, Mary. Ed. 2013. Unlocking writing: a guide for teachers. Oxon: Routledge, 2013.


DICTIONARIES & GRAMMAR RESOURCES
dictionary.cambridge.org
www.oed.com
www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com
wordreference.com

Alexander, L.G. 1988. Longman English Grammar. London: Longman
---------------. 1990. Longman English Grammar Practice. London: Longman
Close, R.A. 1975. Reference Grammar for Students of English. London: Longman.
Eastwood, J. 2006. Oxford Practice Grammar (Intermediate) with Key and CD Rom. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Freeborn, D. 1995. A Course Book in English Grammar. Macmillan.
Hewings, M. 1999. Advanced Grammar in Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Huddleston, R.D. & Pullum, G. 2002. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Jackson, H. 1990. Grammar and Meaning: A Semantic Approach to English Grammar. London: Longman.
Murphy, R. 1999. Essential Grammar in Use. Cassette set. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Murphy, R. 2004. English Grammar in Use: A Self-Study Reference and Practice book for Intermediate Students of English. 3rd. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Murphy, R. 2004. English Grammar in Use (with Answers and CD Rom). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Quirk, R. et al. 19

GENERAL
G1 - Capacity to show the acquisition of knowledge of curricular areas, relationships, assessment criteria and teaching in Primary Education.
G3 - Capacity to cope in multicultural and multilingual situations of language teaching and learning.
G11 - Capacity to become acquainted with, select and use ICTs in the classroom.

SPECIFIC
E1 - Capacity to understand the learning processes in the primary school period in the family, social and school context.
E2 - Capacity to know the students’ characteristics as well as the motivational and social context characteristics.
E52 - Linguistic competence: Capacity for written and oral communication in a foreign language.
E53 - Didactic competence: Capacity to develop and assess curricular contents using appropriate devices, as well as to promote the development of students’ communicative competence.

BASIC
CB1 - Capacity to show the acquisition of knowledge, particularly concerning the students’ field of study.
CB2 - Capacity to apply the knowledge thus acquired to their professional field.
CB4 - Capacity to convey information in both specialized and non-specialized fields view to developing arguments and solving problems.

TRANSVERSAL
T1 - Instrumental knowledge of foreign languages.

The teaching sessions will be held in English. Activities carried out during these class sessions may be individual, or in small or medium-sized groups. General lectures will present and consider the development of the competences related to the process of teaching and learning a foreign language in Primary Education, paying special attention to receptive and productive written skills.

On the other hand, students will improve their communicative competence by dealing with lexical, morphological, and syntactic aspects of the foreign language. This will be done by means of activities of different formats (drills; multiple-choice, true-false, rewriting or gap-filling exercises, etc.). Interactive sessions (for medium-sized groups) will also be focused on the development of the students’ communicative competence, particularly as regards reading and writing skills, by means of activities devised to check students’ comprehension of written texts. Individual and group assessment will be focused on verifying the acquisition of both linguistic competence and methodological knowledge. Tutorials (for small groups or single students) will be monitoring sessions devoted to the students’ supervision and the encouragement of autonomous learning.

Assessment will be based in part on the continuous evaluation of the student throughout the semester and in accordance with the assessment periods as listed below.
PLEASE NOTE: In all of the cases listed here, and for all the assessment periods, students must pass each one of the sections in order to receive a passing final grade for this subject.

FIRST PERIOD OF ASSESSMENT
(A) For the students who regularly attend classes:* (see below)
--Active participation in class and on time completion of tasks: 10%
--Essays and assigned homework: 40%
--Final specific tests (including an essay and a reading component): 50%
* A minimum attendance of 80% is compulsory. The date on which the final specific tests and the student presentations take place will be established at some point during the semester.

(B) For those students who are legally exempt from attending classes:** (see below)
--Preparation of the continuous evaluation tasks assigned: 30%
--Final essay test: 35%
--Final reading test: 35%
**These students must get in touch with the professor in charge during the first two weeks of the semester and come to do the final tests on the date announced in class.

In addition, all the activities turned in for grading must include the consulted bibliographic sources used in the documentation of the work and these sources must be cited according to academic standards for bibliographic and digital citation*. See IMPORTANT NOTICE below.

*IMPORTANT NOTICE: In the USC Rules for Academic Performance (DOG 21 from 21 July, 2011, Art. 16) presenting fraudulent academic work for any type of final evaluation is penalized with a “Fail” in the corresponding exam period. Turning in this type of work may also result in a disciplinary process for the offender. Hence, any detection of plagiarism in any of the academic work turned in for grading in this subject will be penalized with a “Fail” in this subject, even when the student has passing marks in other areas of evaluation. As “plagiarism” we understand when an academic paper includes any partial or complete copy, in literal form or not, of content, or ideas published in other academic papers or in any other type of published format (paper or Internet), and where the student does not cite the source from which the said content or idea was taken. Students who fail because of plagiarism will not be allowed to take part in the second chance exam period.

SECOND PERIOD OF ASSESSMENT
The students who have passed a section during the first period of assessment may retain it for the second period of assessment; in any case, the evaluation system is the same as above*.

STUDENTS WHO ARE RETAKING THE COURSE
Students who need to redo this course, and who have passed the continuous evaluation part of the course from the work done in class during the academic term may keep this part of their mark accordingly. However, if they have not passed the continuous evaluation part of the course, they will need to redo the entire subject.

IMPORTANT NOTICE:
In the event of fraudulent or plagiarized work or submissions in tests or exercises, the terms stated in art. 16 of the “Normativa de avaliación do rendemento académico dos estudantes e de revision de cualificacións” will be applied.

As specified in the official study program for this degree program, this 4.5 ECTS-credit subject will require 112.5 hours of work by the students: 38.5 class hours and 74 hours of autonomous learning. For further information about students’ work, see the sections titled “Assessment” and “Recommendations for the study of this subject”.

The work carried out for this subject should be done according to the standards and specifications set out by the professors. Since this course is part of students’ preparation for their professional future, all assigned tasks must be completed as instructed and turned in on time.

In addition, all the activities turned in for grading must include the consulted bibliographic sources used in the documentation of the work and these sources must be cited according to academic standards for bibliographic and digital citation.

With respect to the students’ workload, apart from the orientations and suggestions provided by the professors in charge during the class period, see also RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE STUDY OF THIS SUBJECT (below).

PREREQUISITES & FORMAL REQUIREMENTS:
Although there are no prerequisites, or formal requirements, for this course, students should have a high intermediate level (B1.2) of English language skills. If you are unsure that you have reached this level, you may contact the professor in charge for more information.
Students should also have already passed the compulsory subject “Teaching and Learning Communicative Competence: English”.
In addition, students must have access to a computer and/or smartphone with audio and video capability to be able to access the on-line classroom and to complete certain activities assigned in this course.

CLASS ATTENDANCE:
Class attendance is mandatory; moreover, students ought to be capable of doing the work involved in this course on their own. Thus, those students who do not attend class must turn in the work assigned in class as part of their continuous evaluation mark. In order to favor continuous evaluation, a certain percentage of the Final Mark will reflect students' attendance to and active participation in class. In addition, emphasis will be placed on oral work done throughout the course and this oral work is best done in the classroom itself. In any case, as a University student you are responsible for preparing the work assigned in class whether you attend class or not.

CLASS WORK & HOME STUDY:
Active participation in class will help the students to improve their performance in both written and oral English. After the completion of an area of study, students are expected to continue their preparation of the vocabulary and/ or tasks assigned. During the academic year some written work be assigned to allow for the practice of this skill. In order for this practice to be evaluated, ALL WRITTEN WORK MUST BE TYPEWRITTEN, DOUBLE-SPACED, AND TURNED IN ON TIME.

--If plagiarism/cheating is detected, in either the activities or the exam, the sanctions laid out in “Normativa de avaliación do rendemento académico dos estudantes e de revisión de cualificacións” will be applied. See IMPORTANT NOTICE above in the “ASSESSMENT SYSTEM” section above..