This course is designed to enhance oral communication skills (listening and speaking) through watching movies (online materials), and making your own movies in English. Students will get to practice their reading and writing skills, as well, by script reading and writing. We will watch video series
together to learn common phrases and expressions in context, then answer Q&A, and conduct discussions online. There are some phrases that have embedded meaning as well as literal meaning. For example, what does it mean by ‘Get out of here!’ when the speaker had the smiley yet surprised
expression on his face when he said it? Do you really need to get out of the room? Or did the speaker mean something else? These acts are called ‘indirect speech acts’ and students will learn by experiencing them and other types of discourse techniques via role plays. The focus will be placed on
learning by ‘speech act’ (such as ‘apology’ and ‘sarcasm’) but other patterns of pragmatic markers will be covered such as discourse markers, y’know within conversation.
Students will also study our original films (several skits made by English speaking SFC students) and compare their own skits with the model interactions. After learning useful expressions and phrases within context, students will be expected to develop their own scripts, and make their own movies in a group, utilizing what they learned in class. Attention should be paid to not only linguistic but also paralinguistic features such as tones as well as non-verbal ones (facial expressions, gestures, gazing, and body language). They are expected to learn autonomously online and in class interactively engaging with the instructor and the classmates in English.