Learning English for Academic Purposes: First Steps - A Free Course

Develop the academic language and study skills you need to learn in English at university. The online course “Learning English for Academic Purposes: First Steps” will give you an introduction to the academic language and skills that you will need to study at a university where the teaching is done in English. You will develop four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) using tasks that a university student would undertake: listening to lectures, taking notes, spoken presentations, reading academic texts (including long sentences and visual information) and writing reports using proper academic words.

Learning English for Academic Purposes: First Steps – Course Content

This course will enable you to improve your English listening, speaking, reading and writing. Throughout the course you will be able to share your practice work with other learners, to give and get feedback. The course includes the following topics:

Strategies for reading academic texts;
Assessing the relevance of information for an academic purpose;
Using academic language to describe problems and cause-and-effect;
Academic vocabulary and vocabulary skills;
Producing effective notes from a spoken presentation;
Collaborating with other learners by engaging in peer-to-peer feedback;
Synthesizing information and using it to begin writing a short piece of academic work;
Producing a final written piece of academic work using the skills learned.

Requirements

This course is designed for students who want to study in English at university. You’ll need an English language level of IELTS 5.5.

Summary of the Main Course Features

Educator: Mirjam Hauck – Senior Lecturer in the School of Languages and Applied Linguistics at the Open University

Developed by: The Open University (OU) – the largest academic institution in the UK and a world leader in flexible distance learning, with a mission to be open to people, places, methods, and ideas.

Duration: 6 weeks x 4 hours per week

Start Date: 3 July 2017