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Hi there! Welcome to my class-related home page. The courses I am teaching for the Fall Semester 2009 are the following:
- Understanding English: Listening & Speaking 2: This course is not just a conversation class, but rather a training camp for students who wish to improve their English speaking and listening ability. The strong focus will be on student-defined challenges, group discussion, and the evelopment of specific conversational skills.
- Presentation Workshop: This course will focus on the development of public speaking and presentation skills. It will not focus on grammar but rather onthe many skills involved in being an effective public speaker: eye contact, voice projection, use of gestures and intonation for dramatic effect, managing an audience, organization of a presentation, working with slideshows, and of course lots of practice at giving presentations. By the end of this course, you should be not just competent but confident when you are assigned the job of giving a presentation in a course, or when preparing for the annual Junior Presentation Contest within our department.
- Literature in a Multicultural Society: This (evening) course will involve studying different understandings or ideas about the notion of “multiculturalism” through various writings. We will focus on Canadian literature, because of my background, and will look at a diverse selection of short stories, poems, and essays highlighting not just the views of the dominant majority in Canada but also those held by authors coming from regional, ethnic, immigrant, social, and other minorities.
- Journalistic Writing (aka “Essay Writing 2″): This course will involve participating in project meetings, writing magazine-styled articles for actual publication, peer editing, learning to use the interface of a newsmagazine-styled website to post articles, and the mastery of various research techniques, including interviewing. A crash course in magazine layout may be offered, though students will not be responsible for layout of print editions of the magazine. It is offered under the course title “Essay Writing” (Essay Writing 2, I think, to be precise) but in fact it is “Journalistic” writing. The best student work will be published both in a print magazine (The Catholic University Forum, aka The CUF) and online, and a cash prize will be offered the best article in each issue of the Catholic University Forum. (”Best” as in, the article voted best by other professors at CUK.) Yes, that’s right, a cash prize. How often is that offered in your courses? Enrollment will be limited, so if you’re interested, sign up as soon as possible!
For more information on any of these classes, please contact me, or see the sidebar to the right for links to previous versions of some of these courses and helpful advice for all students!