ILMAPRN: Academic Skills and Language for Politics, Economics and International Relations (Postgraduate)

Module code: ILMAPRN

Module provider: International Study and Language Institute

Credits: 0

Level: Postgraduate Masters

When you'll be taught: Semester 1

Module convenor: Mr Daniel Devane, email: d.devane@reading.ac.uk

Pre-requisite module(s):

Co-requisite module(s):

Pre-requisite or Co-requisite module(s):

Module(s) excluded:

Placement information: NA

Academic year: 2024/5

Available to visiting students: No

Talis reading list: No

Last updated: 21 May 2024

Overview

Module aims and purpose

This non-credit bearing module focuses on the discipline-specific language and communication skills needed to perform effectively at postgraduate level in the School of Politics, Economics, and International Relations (SPEIR). It is primarily designed for international students, including students new to studying in the UK and students whose first language is not English, and aims to support their transition to the UK HE context and academic culture by enhancing their academic skills and English self-confidence. The module recognises the need to focus primarily on the key SPEIR written coursework genre, the essay, but also includes work on other written genres and skills for oral presentations. The module recognises the need to focus primarily on the essay genre. This developmental enhancement has been designed to be transferrable to other modules, both concurrent and future, and thus help facilitate the students' assessment task and overall performance in their postgraduate SPEIR studies at the University of Reading. 

Module learning outcomes

By the end of the module, it is expected that students will be able to: 

1. Apply knowledge of essay and presentation genres in postgraduate Politics, Economics and International Relations to interpret assignment tasks and employ appropriate organisational patterns in their completion. 
2. Demonstrate an understanding of academic integrity through appropriate use of referencing conventions, including the paraphrase and summary of source material. 
3. Employ task-appropriate language (grammar and lexis) in written and spoken texts. 
4. Demonstrate criticality by using a variety of task-appropriate techniques to incorporate and comment on the views of others in their essays and presentations. 

Module content

Classes will focus on: 

• Understanding the key written coursework assignment genre in postgraduate, the essay, including: 
  • Expected structural & argumentation patterns and how these differ according to question type. 
  • Reading-to-write processes and the centrality of source use and synthesis to successful essay writing. 
  • How ‘voice’ and ‘stance’ are realised linguistically within essay texts. 
• Key skills for academic writing  
  • Incorporating sources using paraphrasing, summarising and direct quotation. 
  • ‘Information flow’ in English-language texts. 
  • Employing linguistic features of textual cohesion to clearly signal relationships between parts of a text. 
• Grammar for academic communication, including verb tense and form, nominalisation, and clause and sentence structure. 
• Speaking and oracy skills, and strategies for dealing with Politics, Economics and International Relations presentations, including: 
  • Physical oracy skills, such as fluency, pace, tonal variation, clarity, voice projection, and body language. 
  • Linguistic oracy skills, such as vocabulary choice, register, grammar, structure and organisation. 
  • Cognitive oracy skills, such as critical examination of concepts, reasoned support for arguments, and consideration of audience level/type. 
  • Social and emotional oracy skills, such as speaking confidence (self-assurance, liveliness, and flair). 

Structure

Teaching and learning methods

The module will adopt an overall ‘genre’ approach, taking the social purpose of texts as the starting point to explicate organisation/structure and key discourse and language features.   

It takes a discipline-specific approach to language and literacy development using example student texts and published Politics, Economics and International Relations specific sources in classroom tasks. 

Teaching and learning is facilitated in a generally task-based approach, through a combination of reflective and productive activities, guided analysis of texts and peer and tutor feedback. The guided analysis of texts involves 'noticing' of key organisational and linguistic features in context and exercises to practise the use of relevant language. 

Interactive tasks are regularly included and are appropriately scaffolded to build students’ confidence in participating in discussion. The in-person delivery of the module will be supported by digital tools in the classroom where appropriate (e.g. short interactive learning tasks and/or quizzes). 

Study hours

At least 12 hours of scheduled teaching and learning activities will be delivered in person, with the remaining hours for scheduled and self-scheduled teaching and learning activities delivered either in person or online. You will receive further details about how these hours will be delivered before the start of the module.

Please note the independent study hours above are notional numbers of hours; each student will approach studying in different ways. We would advise you to reflect on your learning and the number of hours you are allocating to these tasks.

Semester 1 The hours in this column may include hours during the Christmas holiday period.

Semester 2 The hours in this column may include hours during the Easter holiday period.

Summer The hours in this column will take place during the summer holidays and may be at the start and/or end of the module.

Assessment

Requirements for a pass

There is no assessment on this module.

Summative assessment

Penalties for late submission of summative assessment

There is no assessment on this module.

Formative assessment

Formative assessment is any task or activity which creates feedback (or feedforward) for you about your learning, but which does not contribute towards your overall module mark.

Sessions will take a task-based approach, enabling students to receive feedback from the instructor and from other students during class discussions. 

Reassessment

Additional costs