Module 6. Writing the summary of a newspaper article

Students 4078 Spring 2013

Professional english Examination (contents, requirements and dates)

1) Reading newspaper articles (home work + class work+ exam)=> Portfolio

Materials circa one article a week every class in February and March (every week you will be mailed articles or given a link + questions to answer in writing based on the article and will have to mail back your home work regularly every Wednesday to the instructor)

2) General English test (home / class + exam)=> Portfolio

Home self-revision: www.oup.com/student/headway Intermediate for ‘3’; Upper-intermediate for ‘4’ => Test Builder 4 parts for revision at home before the lesson: to bring printed copies of your test with hand-made corrections (with the date)

• Part 1: Tenses; Present Perfect Simple/Continuous; Narrative tenses; Future forms; Expressing habit + Part 2: Questions and negatives; Participles; Expressions of quantity; Relative clauses; Determiners (February 22)
• Part 3: Modals 1, 2; Hypothesizing; Linking and commenting; Antonyms + Part 4: make/do; take/put; get; life/time; word pairs (March 22)

NB Extra grammar exercises for “5”:

www.oup.com/student/headway Advanced => Grammar Units 1-6 (March 29);Units 7-12 (April 5)

3) 10-minute Power Point presentationon your bachelor paper (class) –only for the students having potential for ‘4’ and ‘5’=> Portfolio (2 slides on A4)

Date: April 19(speakers appointed in advance)

4) Academic writing (home + class for editing) –Bachelor paper abstract April 19(1^st draft) –the edited final draft for submission April 26.

• 1-page abstract of your bachelor work research in English (200 words) for ‘4’ and ‘5’.
• A short abstract of your bachelor work research in English (60 words) for ‘3’

Duration and deadlines

1. 10-minute Power Point presentation (for 4 and 5) – 40%
2. 30-minute Language test - April 26– 15%
3. 30 minutes to read an article +to write answers to 3 questions - April26 – 25%
4. Submission of the bachelor work abstract April 26 – 20%
5. Reflection report May ? (examination date ?)

5: 90-100%; 4: 75-90%; 3: 60-75%

Portfolio contents

7 newspaper articles: All writing tasks;

Grammar testsprinted templates from the site with the gaps filled in by hand;

Bachelor work abstract 200 for 4 and 5; 60 words for 3.

Students who will miss classes must do extra work – translations into Russian (grammar exercises + newspaper articles)

The format of the abstract (next page)

Saint-Petersburg State Polytechnical University

World and Regional Economy Department

Professional English

Ivan Susanin, 4078/1

The analysis of the … (your bachelor research theme)

Abstract

Key words:

module 6. Writing the summary of a newspaper article

Summary writing is an important skill in academic and professional work. In this module, you are going to write summaries of newspaper articles by practicing a variety of activities:

1. reading articles and answering comprehension questions;

2. identifying the main idea and supportive arguments;

3. paraphrasing and compressing the information when writing definitions, theses, and outlines of the article in your own words;

4. turning the outline into the summary of particular length (e.g. 80 words);

5. evaluating your partner’s first draft using assessment scoring rubrics;

6. editing your first draft by focusing both on the content and the language of the summary;

In addition, you will learn more about the specific features of the academic discourse and will apply this knowledge during the editing stage of your writing by attending to the following areas:

· vocabulary (e.g. replacing spoken words with formal academic words);

· sentence structures (e.g. joining short sentences into longer ones);

· transition words to ensure a smooth move from idea to idea, from sentence to sentence;

· tenses and verb forms (e.g. consistency of tenses or passive forms);

· articles and prepositions;

· spelling and punctuation (e.g. no comma before ‘that, because’, etc.)

· word count of the summary (e.g. making your summary shorter/longer if necessary).

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 1085