Course syllabus

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Welcome to ACADENG 104 Academic English for Business (a 15-point course)

Course Description
This course focuses on academic English skills to help Business students understand and express business-related concepts. Students develop effective strategies for reading, writing, and vocabulary-building by studying the language features of texts for academic style and communicative effects. Students will apply the skills and knowledge they develop from reading and language analysis activities, and will follow the process of writing, revising and editing to produce accurate texts that have clear communicative purpose and meaning.

Course Aim 
The course aims to equip students with appropriate academic literacy skills to read, understand and write texts that are relevant to undergraduate Business studies.

Course Advice 
This course is intended for undergraduate students who are doing a Business degree and who have not met the Academic English Literacy Requirement or who score band 6 or below in the Diagnostic English Language Needs Assessment (DELNA). It will help to increase students’ confidence in their academic English reading and writing when completing tasks relevant to their university Business studies. ACADENG 104 may also be available as an elective to students from other Faculties. Before enrolling, students should seek advice from their Faculty Students' Centre to check that ACADENG 104 fits the structure of their study programme.  

Pre-requisites: none
Restrictions: May not be taken if ENGWRIT 101 or ESOL 201 or ACADENG 201 or ESOL 210 or ACADENG 210 has previously been passed.

Learning Outcomes 
At the end of the course the students should be able to:

  1. identify, learn and use academic and business-related vocabulary.
  2. read a range of texts relevant to academic business studies  for overall understanding,
  3. select and use strategies appropriate to the reading purpose: predicting, surveying, scanning, skim-reading, close-reading, SQ3R, summarising, inferring.
  4. understand text organisation and language of academic text-types: expository, comparison/contrast, cause and effect, argument/counter-argument/refutation, problem-solution-evaluation
  5. use critical thinking to: distinguish key points from supporting evidence, separate fact from opinion, analyse and evaluate key ideas , synthesise information, argue with justification.
  6. write well-structured paragraphs that are clear and coherent
  7. write researched, referenced essays/reports with ideas expressed in paraphrase or summary
  8. use processes for effective writing (planning, drafting, revising, editing, proof-reading)
  9. evaluate and edit own and others’ writing for content and expression

Learning and Teaching 
Students attend a one-hour lecture and one two-hour tutorial per week.

Lecture  Monday 12-1pm  check on SSO just before the first lecture for the lecture room location
Tutorials: You attend the tutorial that you are enrolled in – again, check the room location before the first one

Tutorials have 30 students who work individually, and in pairs/small groups.Students are expected to attend the lecture, and read and understand information in the course book prior to the tutorial, then apply that knowledge to tasks completed in and out of class. In terms of workload, the university expects students to spend approximately 10 hours a week on each course, including class time.

Weekly Topics
1) Academic versus Business culture/genre. Text types. Informal versus 'academic' language.
2) Business structure/Paragraph structure. Academic/Business/technical words. Expository text. Paragraph writing.
3) Reading strategies. Writing a text outline and summary. Critical thinking. Paragraph analysis and coherence.
4) Reading to remember. Note-taking. Compare and contrast text. Reading graphics. Writing an evaluative text.
5) Cause and Effect text. Language analysis - hedging. Paragraph structure. Editing writing for accuracy.
6) Revision and Test preparation
7) The process of writing: brainstorming, planning, outlining. Researching skills. The 3Rs.
8) Argument essay features:position and support, counter-argument and refutation. Logical reasoning.
9) Integrating sources: Citation and referencing. Avoiding plagiarism - paraphrase and summarising
10) Process writing: Re-writing for clarity - revising, editing, proofing
11) Report writing for Business. Report structure. Writing to accompany graphics.
12) Review of coursework and exam task preparation

The Course Coordinator is Lizzy Roe - feel free to email her if you have any queries l.roe@auckland.ac.nz

Course summary:

Date Details Due