Academic Speaking & Listening (Arts & Humanities)
This course is to help improve your listening and speaking skills. You will practise typical features of pronunciation (e.g. intonation and connected speech) and learn about patterns of discourse expected in an Arts/Humanities/Social Science academic context. As you will take part in group discussions during seminars at Sheffield University, this course gives you the opportunity to practise and gain confidence in giving your opinions, participating in discussions and giving presentations. You will also learn how to present tables and other graphic data orally, and receive tips on preparing a handout.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
At the end of this course, you should be better able to:
Listening:
- Recognise sentences and joined-up speech
- Follow a lecture
- Follow developmental changes or sequences (i.e. change over time)
- Hear and note-down dates, numbers, spellings, and other forms of data (e.g. percentages, etc.)
- Identify and understand speculative/tentative language
- Distinguish between important and unimportant data
- Take effective notes
- Infer meaning
- Recognise speaker opinion in discussions
Discussions:
- Initiate discussion
- Seek opinions & ensure all group members are included in the discussion
- Explain classifications and purpose/function
- Offer opinions, agree/disagree, use formal & informal register
- Justify & explain decisions
- Participate in both small group and whole class discussions
- Report group discussions to whole class
Presentation Skills:
- Introduce your subject (purpose & structure of presentation)
- Sequence & signpost
- Use indirect questions in discussion
- Clarify, confirm and interrupt
- Rephrase & reformulate
- Describe statistics, tables, figures
- Create & use handouts
Group Presentation Skills:
- Introduce the members of the group & their function
- Hand over
- Field questions