ESL 500 Course Description

Overview: This is the first course in a two-course sequence for international graduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It is an all-skills course with both writing and oral components designed to help students succeed in an English-medium academic environment. The primary focus is on paragraph development and organization of American academic writing. Students also practice reading strategies for research articles from different disciplines through summarizing and synthesizing practices. Strategies for avoiding plagiarism and APA style citation will be introduced and practiced with source-based writing assignments. As final projects, students will produce a written critique of a research article and an oral critique of a research object from their discipline.

Credit: 0 hours

Contact hours: 4 hours

Prerequisite: A minimum score of 103 on the TOEFL is required by the University for a full status admission. Students in 79-102 score range are admitted with limited status and are placed into ESL 500 or 501 on the basis of their EPT score. Students may proficiency out of ESL 500 and be promoted to 501 on the basis of their performance on a diagnostic test administered in the first week of instruction. 

Relation to other courses: ESL 500 is the first course in the graduate sequence of required courses (ESL 500 and 501). 

Grading Basis: Letter grades are based on performance of students on class assignments and participation in class. A passing grade for this course is a grade of “B-” or higher. Grades are recorded as S (satisfactory) or U (unsatisfactory) on the student transcript, but instructors will grade on a letter grade scale throughout the semester.

Student Demographics: International graduate students registered in this course normally have completed their undergraduate studies in their native countries and come to the US to work on their graduate and post-graduate education. Most students have been admitted to the university based on their past academic performance and their TOEFL score (79-102).

Course objectives: Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

1. Demonstrate an ability to engage in writing academic papers as a process (planning, inventing, outlining, drafting, and revising). 
2. Create an essay that has a clear thesis statement, supporting arguments with evidence and examples, introductory and conclusion paragraphs.   
3. Summarize and synthesize research articles by identifying and compare/contrasting the main ideas.
4. Critique research articles with logical explanations, evidence, and examples. 
5. Integrate sources in their writing without plagiarism (by paraphrasing, quoting, and summarizing) and document them in APA style.  
6. Locate and use library resources available to them online and off-line.
7. Give constructive feedback to peers on their writing in both oral and written forms. 
8. Deliver an oral presentation that critiques a research object from a field of study with clear and engaging visual aids, speech, and body language. 

Major Assignments

Unit 1: Diagnostic Revision Process Assignment
Unit 2: Synthesis Essay
Unit 3: Critique
Unit 4: Oral Presentation