This course focuses on current events and cultural topics in English. Students further develop their pronunciation, vocabulary, idioms, and conversational skills. This real-life focus familiarizes and accustoms students with the diversity of American Culture and increases self-esteem and confidence in using English in their educational and personal lives.
Course Learning Outcomes
The objectives of this course are to familiarize students with the many different aspects of American culture such as greetings, gestures, dating, tipping, safety laws, health, holidays, education, shopping, and values. As students are introduced to certain topics they will be able to converse and convey their personal opinions, argue a point of view, and share and discuss experiences.
Students will be able to understand and make inferences from conversations and talks regarding academic and social topics. Clear English pronunciation, including stress and intonation, will be emphasized and demonstrated through using authentic materials to stimulate students’ oral communication skills.
Performance Objectives
After the successful completion of each unit, students will be able to:
- Discuss assumptions of culture and recognize and use common gestures and sayings;
- Get acquainted with each other, recognize and become familiarized with appropriate topics of discussions and distance and space requirements;
- Associate social events and holidays with experiences and interpret and discuss superstitions;
- Distinguish the different methods of meeting people to date and use compliments and conversation on a date;
- Differentiate the different teaching and learning styles, collaborate with classmates on an assigned task, and classify rules for attending school;
- Identify common shopping phrases, prices, and negotiations, and create a conversation between a customer and a salesperson;
- Recognize the different styles, textures, and tastes of food, and produce a conversation on ordering and dining in restaurants;
- Correlate health habits and health issues, and perform a doctor/dentist visit role play;
- Associate legal terms and legal issues with law and crimes and differentiate road signs;
- Describe values and people’s version of the American dream and interpret government terms and American politics.