1st Year, LMA, 1st Semester – As. Dr. Monica Manolachi – monica.manolachi@gmail.

com

English Practical Course

There are 14 weeks in total. There will be only one test, on June 1. The final grade is based on the
following:
- test (20%)
- online activity (20%)
- attendance (10%)
- 1 project based on an article (20%)
- 1 essay on language aspects (10%)
- activity in class, including an oral presentation (20%)

The essay (between 600 and 700 words) and the project should be sent no later than 15 May.
On March 9, we are not having classes because I am away.

In terms of content, this semester we will focus on:

(1) grammar aspects related to tenses:
- conditionals
- reported speech
- emphasis
- inversion and fronting
- verbs followed by –ing or infinitive
(2) vocabulary aspects related to verbs
- verbs plus preposition
- collocations
- phrasal verbs
- idioms

1. The essay is meant to help you become more aware of several language aspects. It should include your
personal reflections on what you observe while learning foreign languages. Some of the topics you could
approach are: formal and informal language in context; the relationship between language and gender;
causes and effects of bilingualism; various types of Englishes; neologisms and/or borrowings; the roles of
multilingual texts; TV translations; terminology and specialized language (for ex., medical, journalistic,
legal etc.), the limits of translation; the strange joy of language hybridity; the history of certain idioms of
words etc. You are supposed to do research online or in a library, but make sure you approach critically
what you read and cite your sources if it is necessary. You can approach either one of the topics above or a
few of them or you can choose something else related to language. The essay may refer to English, but also
to Romanian or to other language(s) that you know. It can be a comparative essay if you wish. Or you can
tackle only one single word or expression that you find interesting to discuss, from various points of view.
2. The project based on an article is an exercise of exploiting a text for teaching purposes. You are going
to carefully choose an article (around 700 words, more or less) from an online source (The Economist, The
Guardian, New York Times etc), translate it into Romanian and construct a number of 4 exercises based on
its content. The exercises should be of two types:
- GENERAL: True / False sentences about the article; OR summarizing the paragraphs of the
article; OR general questions about the content of the article etc.
- VOCABULARY: matching words from the article with definitions taken from a dictionary; OR
matching collocations existing in the article; OR multiple choice exercises (when you have to
choose A, B or C) based on the article; OR work on prefixed and suffixed words from the text;
For this task, you may need to browse some English handbooks, to check these types of exercises and how
they work. I am also going to show you a model in class and discuss together what you have to do.

3. The oral presentation can be on any topic and you should work in pairs. It should take about 10-15
minutes. There will be two days for the oral presentations that we will establish together. The presentation
should have 4 parts: an introduction; a first aspect/problem; a second aspect/problem; a conclusion. You
may ask me for advice when choosing the topic. Remember it is an oral presentation, so you will not be
supposed to read from any paper. And it should be short and sweet (this is an idiom).

Note!
- All homework has to be sent to the following email address: monica.manolachi@gmail.com
- When you type your work, make sure you type it correctly. You can use a free online spellchecker (find it
on Google). In terms of dictionaries that you can use when writing essays, I recommend you the Oxford
Collocations Dictionary for Students of English (a blue cover with some puzzle pieces on it).
- When typing your translation of the article in Romanian, make sure you use diacritics (ș, ț, ă, î, â) and
leave no space before the punctuation mark (before comma, full stop etc).
- Remember to write your name, year, faculty on any homework you submit. Ex. Ana Popescu, LMA, An I
- Do not hurry to send work that is too simple, but make sure you meet the deadline.
- Write your essay in as much detail as possible using some vocabulary studied in class.
- Choose appropriate titles of your own. Suggestions: http://writeitsideways.com/whats-in-a-name-writing-
the-right-title/
- Any attempt to plagiarize will be followed by unfortunate consequences.