“Advancing Clear Communication” is a 14 week intensive English skills development class which focuses on teaching pre-advanced thoughtful communication of ideas. The main goal of the course is to develop enhanced language skills of recognizing and building logical sequence from explanation to example and thus achieve better understanding in communicating ideas. The two clearly graphed targets are making a point and supporting the point made, while strengthening the 4 skills of English learning: reading, listening, speaking and writing. The students are offered abundant practice in developing main ideas and supporting details and are provided with 15 high-appeal socio-political communication topics within which they can have systematic practice in thinking, reading, writing, and discussion.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Upon successful completion of this course the students will be able to:

• identify and formulate main idea and supporting details;
• distinguish between point and fact; general vs. specific ideas; main idea vs. central point/thesis; explicit vs. implied main idea;
• identify figures of speech such as simile or metaphor;
• identify and use the topic keywords leading to the main idea;
• determine locations of the main idea;
• distinguish between major and minor details;
• use mapping or outline in structuring oral expression or essays;
• identify and utilize patterns that organize and structure oral/written expression such as: list of order, time order, definition and example, comparison / contrast;
• identify and utilize words of transition and illustration cause and effect;
• format and structure an essay;
• stay on topic;
• provide sufficient support.