ESL 080 Advanced Speaking & Listening

Students will increase fluency and confidence in speaking through informal class discussions and unscripted speech in presentations and debates. Students will learn and demonstrate appropriate formal and informal word-phrasing, colloquial and academic speech, and the differences in their usages. Students will learn to effectively produce the sounds of American English phonetics through pronunciation practice. Students will acquire listening, note-taking, and comprehension skills through previewing regular academic classes and weekly classroom exercises. Students will utilize the campus library to acquire research skills in preparation for researched presentations. Students will demonstrate understanding of APA formatting and referencing in academic presentations. Students will demonstrate an understanding of research and academic analysis by completing academic PowerPoint presentations. Prerequisite: Students assigned to this course have scored between a 46-50 composite score on the listening comprehension section of the Internet-based TOEFL test administered by international programs at the beginning of each semester.