Course Description:

The purpose of learning English is to use it! This section of Freshman English is designed as an interactive and student-centered workshop to help students improve their listening, speaking, reading, and writing abilities in English. Using resources such as English interviews, news videos, articles, and intriguing TED talks, we will focus on issues in the contemporary world. Students are expected to spend one to two hours a week preparing for class, probably including reading an article, listening to an interview, or watching a video. In class, “the Topic of the Week” will be explored through group presentations, and each group chooses the topic. We will also have different workshops such as Writing, Speech, Pronunciation, News English, and Reading workshops. For the assignments, students need to do a group presentation, write a weekly worksheet to preview the next week's class materials (for 10 weeks), write three paragraphs in this semester, give a 3-minute show and tell, and deliver a 5-minute speech.

A special feature of this class: Students are encouraged to make an appointment with the TA for a tutorial session after class to improve their speaking skills and pronunciation. In addition, a friendly native English speaker from Harvard University (who can also speak Mandarin Chinese) will sit in our class as an observer since October. Students are encouraged to converse with this observer during or after class.

**Update (09/13/2021)
For those who wish to be added to the class, please fill in the Google Form (https://forms.gle/2A8QJU8FMffajhuZ8) by September 18th. The authorization code and the link to the first class will be sent by 9/20 to those who are added to the class.