Coordinator: Dr. Letty CHAN
Course Description:
This six credit English-in-the-Discipline course is offered to second year students studying Pharmacy. It helps students develop the necessary skills to communicate effectively using written and spoken English within their studies and beyond. In the writing component, students will write a Wikipedia article for a real-world audience on a pharmacy topic, using research and reading skills, coherent and accurate language, appropriate tone and citation and referencing. In the speaking component, students will present the information from their research in an academic-style oral presentation format which is engaging for the audience. Students will also learn essential word parts in medical terminology, and apply word knowledge and strategies for learning new terms and their pronunciation. Assessment is entirely by continuous assessment.
Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the course, students should be able to:
- Identify, critically analyze and summarize disciplinary sources related to a pharmacy topic
- Communicate disciplinary/ specialist knowledge in writing for a non-specialist audience
- Evaluate the writing of your peers and respond appropriately to feedback given on your work
- Orally present research clearly using presentation skills, effective visuals and appropriate language
- Recognise medical word elements; analyse build and define medical terms
Strategies:
- Learning how to write an email as well as a forum response in the context of a drug enquiry (genre awareness).
- Practicing how to adjust your language to respond to a drug enquiry from different types of people such as health-care professionals or patients (audience awareness).
- Working on interactive medical terminology tasks with emphasis on word analysis, word formation, terms used in context and pronunciation strategies (etymology).
- Learning how to write a drug evaluation article for a pharmacy bulletin (genre awareness).
- Researching and reading academic research articles and practicing how to paraphrase and how to avoid plagiarism (writing ethics).
Assessment Methods:
(with breakdown of percentage weighting of the various methods)
- Tests (30%)
- Oral Presentations (25%)
- Other genres of writing (45%)