course postponed to June!

reserved for first-year PhD students!

 Duration

30 hours in ten 3-hour lessons (every Tuesday at 11:30 a.m.)

The aim of the course is to provide an overview of the features of English for research purposes, with a focus on both written texts and oral presentations.

As regards written texts, the rhetorical features of abstracts and research papers will be discussed in order to maximize the participants’ active reading skills and increase their autonomy in the drafting of texts in English. More specifically, attention will be paid on aspects of written English such as nominalization and the use of verb tenses and voices and on editorial aspects such as paragraph structure and punctuation.

The course will also focus on public speaking so as to enhance the skills required in conference presentations and will concentrate on aspects related to delivery, body language, impact techniques, visual aids, and pronunciation. Teaching methods To achieve a balance between theoretical and practical instruction, the teaching methods will combine mini-lectures with teacher-led in-class exercises, peer review activities based on participant-generated content, conference simulations and discussion.

Grammar Contents 1. Future Perfect 2. Future Perfect Continuous 3. All Conditionals 4. Modals: can’t have/ needn’t have 5. Past Perfect 6. Past Perfect Continuous 7. Will and going to, for prediction 8. Wish 9. Would, expressing habits in the past 10. Used to, be used to, get used to 11. Phrasal verbs At the end of the course the students should develop the following skills: Writing skills (abstracts and introductions) : sentence and paragraph structure, punctuation, word order and thematization, verb tense and voice, modal verbs, formal and impersonal style, being emphatic and hedging. Oral skills (conference presentations): delivery, intonation, pronunciation, transitions, body language rapport with audience, impact techniques, question management

Course book: English Grammar in Use. A self-study reference and practice book for intermediate learners of English. Fourth Edition. Raymond Murphy Other books (for student’s self-reference): - The Burlington English Grammar. Exercice book. B1-B2. – The New Burlington English Grammar, Conti/Sharman/Zizzo, Le Monnier ?? – English for Everyone, Grammatica Completa, Gribaudo Editore