General English Programs

 

Najm 101	This is an elementary-level general English course for undergraduate students who register in the Colleges of Arts, Education, Administrative Sciences and Agriculture. (more info.)	Spring (2008/2009)
Najm 103	English 103 is a general Reading course, which registers undergraduate students from the College of Arts, who specialize in the Arabic Language. (more info.)	Fall (2008/2009)
Najm 106	This is an upper-intermediate level course in general as well as specific reading skills for students who have passed the Eng. 103 Final exam and who have enrolled in the College of Arts with Arabic as their principal subject. (more info.)	Fall (2008/2009)

 

 

Course Description: Najm 101 

 This is an elementary-level general English course for undergraduate students who register in the Colleges of Arts, Education, Administrative Sciences and Agriculture. It is the first university level course in English for general category of students and it combines all the four language skills with the basic thrust on functional grammar.

            The course provides integrated skills (productive and receptive) necessary for basic communication in both oral and written forms of the language. Emphasis on systematic learning of grammar and vocabulary is balanced with development of linguistic sub-skills. The course ensures the coverage of common and useful language related topics of general interest with which the students are expected to be familiar with. It encourages students to develop sub-skills such as reading or listening for gist or for specific information, and use new vocabulary in a meaningful context. On completion of the course students should have reasonable ability in reading, writing, listening and speaking.

 General objectives of the course:

With the completion, learners should be able to: 

•         inculcate the habit of reading in English, mostly at the general level.

•         develop autonomous skills of reading.

•         develop mostly general lexical skills

•         identify and write simple sentences and develop writing skills with special reference to spelling and writing short sentences.

•         concentrate while listening so as to develop general listening / speaking skills.

•         identify general ideas in the listening passage.

•         listen for specific details

•         be familiar with simple sentence structures, and common English tenses.

•         to talk about/describe different people or things, express their likes or dislikes.

•         to describe families, habits, routines, and ask and answer personal information.

 Evaluation

The students will be given two mid-terms each carrying 20% of the total grade, and a final examination with 50% of the marks. The remaining 10% shall be allotted to attendance and participation.

 

 

Course Description: Najm 103 

       English 103 is a general Reading course, which registers undergraduate students from the College of Arts, who specialize in the Arabic Language. It is a one-semester course, with a focus on reading comprehension, for learners of English as a foreign language at the Intermediate level.

       The main objective of this course is to give those students, who major in Arabic, the experience of learning a foreign language and to encourage them to improve their reading skills by learning new reading strategies.

       The underlying purpose behind the course is to actively engage students in pleasure reading lessons and brainstorming exercises to develop multiple aspects of their reading ability.

      

Teaching Methodology:

            Teaching of the course material will be conducted in the classroom starting with warm-up activities and exercises on the grammar components in the reading passages, ending with exercises mainly related to comprehension skills and vocabulary building. Special attention will be given to the importance of word order and sentence structure in the English language.

            Students will be trained to look for the main idea in a reading passage, to scan for information, to scan for key words, to make inferences, and to guess the meaning of words from the context in order to get the complete meaning of a passage.

Evaluation:

Students enrolled on the course will be given two mid-term tests carrying 20 marks each, and a final examination out of 50 marks. The remaining 10 marks shall be allotted to attendance and participation.

 

                       Course Description: Najm 106

 

Course Description and Objectives: 

This is an upper-intermediate level course in general as well as specific reading skills for students who have passed the Eng. 103 Final exam and who have enrolled in the College of Arts with Arabic as their principal subject.

The purpose of this course is to help students build speed and flexibility in their reading and to develop their awareness of the reading process so that they will be able to read in ways that are expected in colleges and businesses.

The course is designed to train students in extensive reading skills and in analysing texts of various genres such as literary, scientific, social and historical, and of various types such as descriptive, narrative and expository. 

Teaching Methodology:

  The focus of teaching this course will be on increasing the learners’ sense of involvement and allow them to become more active by triggering their thinking process so that they articulate answers to questions by becoming more conscious of their own thinking process.

  At first, students will be instructed to make intensive reading of the text so that they carefully read and examine it under the guidance of the teacher. This will enable students to develop an appreciation of the English language and selected literary usages. At the next stage they will be encouraged to read as much as possible and develop their ability to read with fluency and understanding.

  Students will also be trained to answer questions by inference, and understand charts, graphs and tables.

Evaluation:

The evaluation of results is based on 100 marks – 50 for 2 class tests and 50 for the final exam.