This is an introductory course of General English (GE) for university students at Al-Quds Open University. Since English is an international language, university students regardless of their specializations need English in pursuing their studies and communicating with foreigners. The course emphasizes all language skills, and aims to improve your English in these skills. It provides clear and straightforward guidance in the basics of English language while focusing on the sort of language people use in everyday communication. Learners have access to varied interesting course materials, wide range of resources for language learning, and up to date audio and visual lessons which are relevant to everyday life. The topics in this course are contemporary and as relevant as possible to the student needs. Language and fluency are developed through debates, discussions and presentations. Students will cover language skills such as justifying opinions, describing and talking about notable people, problem solving, discussing new ideas and innovations. The course consists of five learning units. Each unit consists of four components: Reading, Grammar, Language use and Writing respectively. Students, through their self-study of the course, have good opportunities to develop their language skills easily.
Learners are expected to meet the following learning objectives:
- Improve reading comprehension
- Use new vocabularies in different contexts.
- Use some basic grammatical information appropriately.
- Use certain language functions.
- Write a short well- organized paragraph.
- Improve listening skills through the audio and videos materials.
English 0113 is blended learning course. It depends on the integration of technology and traditional face-to-face instructional activities to create that blended learning environment. Students have free access to attend:
- Four face to face classes: F2F classes give you the chance to communicate directly with your instructor and interact with your classmates.
- Two virtual classes (VC): The VC classes also help you to interact online with both of them.
The course is designed in a way that enables learners to depend on themselves. However, they have access to communicate with their instructors and course coordinator for help and further assistance. By the end of each unit, learners can work on some tasks to ensure that they managed to use English skills properly. Of course learners can check their answer through the keys provided at the end of each unit.
Grades: learners take two exams held at local branches of QOU according to the exams' schedule issued by Deanship of Admission, Registration and Examinations. The dates of the examination periods in general can be found in the academic calendar.
- Midterm Exam: 50 %
It covers three units: 1+2+3 - Final Exam: 50%
It covers two units: 4 + 5
The course consists of the following components:
- Introduction: It contains course description.
- Learning outcomes: It clarifies what should be accomplished or achieved by students after they study the course.
- Units: The learning material of each unit divided into certain sections.
- How to study this course: It determines student’s role and responsibilities that should be carried out to pass the course.
- Assessment and Grading: It explains the way students or the course is assessed or evaluated, and how grade distribution is approved.
- Final self e-assessment: Students take final self-assessment to measure the degree of their success in achieving learning outcomes of the course.
- User's Manual: This component helps students how to interact with the course.
Each unit contains the following main components:
- Introduction: It contains general description of the unit and the learning outcomes.
- Sections: learning material divided into topics followed by figures, drawings, exercises and videos.
- Self assessment: This is a self test students take at the end of each unit.
- Summary: It contains the main points of unit.
- Assistant tools: It contains some services such as sending questions and using online dictionary - Cambridge dictionary.
Each section has the following horizontal icons that students can click to view:
- Introduction: General description of the course and learning outcomes
- Learning Material: Organized under headings and sub headings
- Activities: Some activities are included to develop student’s skills and reinforce their learning abilities.
- Exercises: These reinforce learner's competence.
- Self assessment: Students should take this test after completion of the course.
Main Icons :
- No. 1:The main menu of the course.
- No. 2: Course Name and address of the unit sub-themes.
- No. 3: Student’s achievement indicator.
- No. 4: Share or post course Page or units through social networks as Facebook, Twitter and Google.
- No. 5: Search for specific words on the page.
- No. 6: Content of the main page: modules, themes, and educational material.
- No. 7: Assistance: students can use in case he needs help.
- No. 8: Facebook: follow-up ads and guidance of faculty members and course coordinator.
- No. 9: Access to course by using the code Link (QR) on smart phones.
- No. 10: Course No and copyright use.
Student can search for specific words on the page.
There are three types of self- assessment tests:
- Section assessment.
- Unit assessment.
- Course assessment.
Tests contain some objective questions as T/ F and multiple choice questions. You can click on the check answer to see the correct answer of the test. You can try the test several times by choosing the icon retry. For other test types as essay questions, students check their answer with the provided key.
You can contact your instructor and course coordinator while you are studying the course by sending a message to them and you will receive a reply to your message on your email.
Select the word from the text and then click on “Go to Dictionary”. You are redirected to Cambridge Dictionary to get the necessary information about the selected word.
Student can listen to audio of the reading text. He can click to any sentence or part of the text for direct listening.
Student can identify the meaning and pronunciation for vocabulary, by clicking for each orang word and click to audio icon.
