AFX: English for Hawaii Group

Aloha!

You'll find all the content for our course here.

Our goal together is to help you develop your critical thinking as it pertains to English to bring more nuance to your understanding and use of English.

We'll get that done by increasing your awareness of the purposes, text types, strategies and styles that are used in English to achieve different communication goals.

As members of the Hawaii Project, we're all from science programs, so we'll focus especially on science-related texts, both spoken and written.

There are 3 stages to this course:

  • 6 three-hour classes this fall
  • Hawaii sojourn
  • Completion of assignments after Hawaii

We'll do formative evaluations that will help you prepare for our summative evaluations.

Here's our course outline.

Breakdown

  • Classes 1 – 6 (fall semester)

    • We develop our critical thinking and apply it.
    • We do formative evaluations.
    • We do 2 summative tests: one on theory, the other applied.

  • Hawaii sojourn (between semesters)

    • We get immersed in English in both science-related learning and everyday interactions.
    • We pay attention to the language used by our interlocutors, especially during science-related learning.
    • We use only English among ourselves during one meal each day to improve fluency.
    • We do a summative speaking evaluation that we've prepared before going to Hawaii.
    • We gather content for a Génies en herbes style competition among ourselves that sharpens our science-related speaking.
    • We gather content to use in assignments post-Hawaii.

  • After our return from Hawaii (winter semester)

    • We complete the remaining evaluations:
      • Abridged Report section
      • Blog Posts
      • Scientific Presentation section

What to do when

  • Fall semester
  • Hawaii (between semesters)
  • Winter semester: See the Evaluations section below for details.
    • Abridged Report
    • Blog Posts (half of Integrated Evaluation)
    • Scientific Presentation (other half of Integrated Evaluation)

Photo credit: "science lab - BRU" by RMTip21 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0