An introduction to academic texts

Welcome to English for Academic Purposes in 2017! Our goal is to prepare for the reading, writing, listening, note taking and research required at university level study. Our course home page has information on the assessments and due dates for this course. It also has a year planner with information on what we will learn each week and links to the resources and notes on this blog. If you use that year planner, plus the labels on this blog, you will be able to revisit work we have done together easily at any time of year, including if you are absent from class. The best path to success is to attend every lesson and to use the resources to help you with your homework and assessments.
This week (T1w2, 7-10 Feb) we will look at a selection of texts which are written at the level required for the reading assessment US22751.  We will talk about the text types, the writer's purpose and the reader's purpose.  We will identify the academic language used in the texts which shows types of thinking, and how that is different to specialist subject vocabulary.  We will use the Academic Word List resources to help build our own academic vocabulary for reading and writing.

Learning objective 7 - 10 Feb: 
We are learning about the features of academic writing.

Success criteria:
1. We can identify the features of different text types
2. We can describe the writer's and the reader's purpose for different texts
3. We can differentiate and compare the academic thinking vocabulary and the subject specialist voabulary.
4. We can create our own academic thinking vocabulary glossaries.

Note that we are using SOLO thinking to stretch our thinking skills from beginner to higher levels in all of our learning.


Resources for reading and discussion:

1. An education amendment will require some children start school before age 5 – and it's a mistake editorial, The Listener, first published 2 Feb 2017.

2. Verity Johnson, Flying High at New Zealand's Stunt School, The Listener, first published 2 Feb 2017.

3. Redmer Yska, The Dark Doings of a Wellington Baby-Killer, The Listener, first published 2 Feb 2017.

4. SPARX youth mental health project - 

website

evaluation

Theresa Fleming, Robyn Dixon, Sally Merry, (2012) ‘It’s mean!’ The views of young people alienated from mainstream education on depression, help seeking and computerised therapy, Advances in Mental Health, 10(2), 196 - 204.