Fall 2023 Courses – August 28-December 8

American English Pronunciation

Schedule: TTh 5:30PM-6:45PM
Location: Homewood Campus – Krieger Laverty
This course focuses on improving students’ perception and pronunciation of American English through learning articulation, phonetics, and phonology. Students learn the basics of anatomy of speech production in order to understand how difficult sounds and sound contrasts are made. Students also learn the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to help them distinguish sound contrasts that are difficult depending on the individual students’ native languages. Moving beyond individual sounds, students learn how sounds change depending on what word or phrase they appear in and when they appear in fast or colloquial speech. Finally, students learn and practice intonation appropriate for various types of statements and questions.

Public Speaking in Academia

Schedule: TTh 7:00-8:15PM
Location: Homewood Campus Room – Krieger Laverty
This course is intended for international students with advanced English skills and satisfactory pronunciation who wish to further improve their communication and public speaking skills, as well as better understand the cultural norms of American academia. Students will refine their speaking skills, practice designing and giving presentations, and learn the basics of speaking publicly in American academia, at conferences, and inside the classroom. This course is appropriate as a follow-up to American English Pronunciation (AS 370.602) or as a stand-alone course for students with satisfactory pronunciation. This course can also be repeated for additional practice or taken concurrently with American English Pronunciation.

Advanced Grammar and Academic Writing

Schedule: NOT OFFERED IN FALL23/SPRING24
Location: Homewood Campus
This course is intended for international teaching assistants, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who are not native speakers of English. Students will read and analyze the content, structure, and style of a wide range of academic and professional writing in order to improve their own essays, articles, reports, theses, critiques, and proposals using those features. They will learn to explain, support, compare and argue their ideas effectively through attention to organization, vocabulary, and style. Grammar will be infused into the course as it applies to revision and editing of written work and consistency within various types of writing. Students will use a variety of strategies to improve skills in idea development, organization, word choice, sentence fluency, voice, grammar and mechanics. Writing tasks will be integrated with content, vocabulary, and grammar from various texts.