Course Description

21100  Arabic Level

This course aims to develop the student's language skills by studying the spelling of Arabic, ways of writing some characters, such as al-hamza (glottal stop), and how numbers are written. It reveals some of the spelling problems in the student's writings. It also aims to develop the student's literary taste through looking into some of the literary texts at different literary eras, and studying their syntactic and morphological applications. This course is also concerned with functional writing

22100  English

This is a required course for all university students. The course integrates the four language skills. It also aims at improving the students’ language skills in preparation for their university study. The reading component focuses on the reading strategies needed to increase students’ reading speed. The writing component focuses on answering and formulating questions, on self-editing and revision skills as well as on evaluating the structural integrity of paragraphs. In listening the focus is on listening for main ideas and for specific details. The oral component focuses on asking questions and on answering teacher & student-initiated questions. Issues pertaining to grammar will be addressed only as needed.

22101  English

This is a required course for all students in the college of Arts.  It is intended to develop the students’ fluency in spoken English and to increase their listening comprehension skills.  Students will be exposed to a variety of spoken English. Stress will be on active manipulation of information contained in listening exercises.  Students will also practice communication skills in small group discussions and role-playing, etc.

22102  English

This course emphasizes writing skills at the sentence level integrating the different types and patterns of English sentences. Students will practice writing and combining grammatically sound and full sentences using appropriate punctuation marks.  Writing problems at the sentence level, including fragments, run-ons, comma-splices, etc. Towards the end of the course, students will practice paragraph writing.

22103  English

With view to prepare student for academic study , this course is designed to improve their accuracy and efficiency in reading. The reading passages are intended to enable students to deal with long and complicated sentences and to expend their vocabulary by way of showing that meaning can be deuced from context. Moreover, students are taught to recognize the implicit as well as the explicit meaning of a text and to separate their own opinions from those of the writer.  

22105 EST

This course provides students with abroad but firm basis in scientific English of general nature interactions the for language skills.  It introduce student to the basic reading strategies needed to decode scientific texts and to the basic vocabulary and grammar most likely to be used in lab reports and other written assignments for scientific and technological courses.

22106  Bus. E

This course is designed to meet the needs of first year business students both in their study and future work.  It integrates the four language skills used in business Contexts.  By the end of the course students are supposed to be able to study their business courses  in English easily, and to be familiar with the basic mechanics and strategies of face to face meetings, phone calls, job interviews, etc.

22107 Medical English

This course is intended exclusively for Medical students who want to develop their proficiency in the English language used both in studying medical subjects and performing the medical profession.  It interacts the four language skills but the emphasis is on providing reading practice in the English of the medical science and on introducing students to new vocabulary items ( both general and specialized ) with the most frequent grammatical structures.  Besides, the course should focus on developing the language fluency of students through practicing in small group discussions and role – playing exercises.

22213  Grammar I

This course is designed to give a detailed analysis of the fundamental syntactic categories of English grammar that are essential for the comprehension and production of the simple sentence.  It aims to further students, knowledge of English grammar through exploration and analysis.  The course covers the following areas:

(1) English sentence patterns, (II) The clause system in English (a detailed study of adjectival, nominal, and adverbial clauses, (III) Analysis of English complex sentences based on the prior study of the clause system. 

22214  Writing I

This course is designed to give an introduction to writing skills, mainly at the level of the paragraph, and thus it prepares the ground for writing II which deals with the essay. Students are taught the nature and purpose of the paragraph and are guided to write one according to a variety of purposes (contrastive, descriptive, etc.) using clear, correct, and logically- related sentences.

22221  Introduction to Lit.

This course is designed to help students with little or with no experience in literature with its impulses, definitions, form and literary terms. Poems, short stories, and literary essays are to be studied.  A subsidiary aim is to help students to write essays analyzing and criticizing what they have studied.

22222  Oral English

This course is intended to develop students’ fluency in spoken English and in listening comprehension.  Students practice oral/aural skills in group discussions, role-playing exercises and educational games.

22231  Reading

This course continues to improve techniques, accuracy, and efficiency in reading as well as building vocabulary.  Attention is paid to what constitutes style in English prose with the aim of raising the students’ standard of reading comprehension to the level at which he /she can confidently deal with the kind as academic English that he/she will encounter in his third and fourth years.

22232  Literature I

This course goes back to the early periods of English literature from Middle ages into the 18^th century and outlines the historical development through critical analysis. Particular attention in this course is given to the writing of critical essays.

22233  Integrated Language Skills

This course aims at integrating the various language skills previously taught as separate entities.  It provides extensive training and assignments in the areas of speaking, listening, reading and writing.  

22241  Writing II

This course aims at giving guidance and training in steps needed towards writing essays and reports. Students are expected to express complex ideas sequentially using simple language.  Their writing is expected to be comprehensible to a native speaker not used to reading the writing of foreigners.

22311  Linguistics I

This is an introduction to linguistic analysis in the core topics of linguistics i.e. phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics.  The linguistic analysis will cover English and other languages of the world to show how languages are structured & whether alike or different.  This course is designed to help students proceed on to a more advanced work in the field whenever any of these introductory topics is offered as a separate course.

22312  Linguistics II

This is a continuation of linguistics I.  It is an introduction to language related topics, i.e., historical linguistics, language and the brain, sociolinguistics, bilinguals and language acquisition.  Each of these introductory topics may be offered later as a course at a more advanced level.

22313  Phonetics

This course is meant to be an introduction to the English sound system.  It is a detailed study mainly of vowels and consonants and other related prosodic sound features.  Practice in ear training and phonetic transcription using tapes or native informants is an essential part of the course development.

22314  TEFL ( Methods)

This is a course in the methodology of foreign language teaching comprising the major linguistic and psycholinguistic theories of foreign language teaching and learning, the teaching of basic foreign language skills, vocabulary, grammar, lesson planning, and assessment.

22315  Translation I

Students are asked to make translations of Arabic texts into English and of English texts into Arabic.  All types of writing are attempted: news, commentary essays, narrative, criticism, verse, etc.  Practical use of English to express the needs of the various professions and trades is encouraged and related vocabulary is expanded.  Semantic analysis of a number of groups of words is also stressed.

22321  Literature II 

This course is designed to give an introductory survey of the Neo-classical, Romantics and Victorian periods as well as 20^th century literature.  The characteristics and main features of the periods will be covered, i.e. religious, historical and political together with detailed critical examination of representative texts.

22323  The Novel

The aim of this course is to examine the tradition and theory of the novel as a major genre with certain characteristics, which include style, characters, language, plot and thematic and stylistic approach.  Students are expected to strengthen their abilities as readers; improve their understanding of the novel and its structure, and enhance their critical analysis of literary works.  Major writers such as Hawthorne, Faulkner, Hardy, Lawrence, and Dickens will be the core of this course.

22324  American Literature

This course is a survey of diverse United States writers from 1620-present.  This course begins with a study of Puritan poets:  Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, and other American writers (including Phillis wheatley).  Other traditional authors, such as Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, and Douglas share the spotlight with nontraditional, women, African American, Native American, Chinese American writers and others.  The objective of this course is to study the works of specific canonical and non-canonical American writers from the colonial period to the present; to study major philosophical, social and cultural trends which parallel and /or influence literature of the United States, to examine the styles and points of view of the writers studied. 

22342  Methods of Research Writing

This is a required course for English major students.  It aims to acquaint students with research writing as a process.  Students are introduced to the various procedures involved in research writing including writing research papers across the curriculum, topic selection, research questions, research methodology, data collection and data analysis, presenting research findings, summaries and recommendations, and writing professional bibliographies.

22411  Error Analysis

This is a detailed study of the principles and methodology of both theoretical and applied contrastive analysis.  The students will be exposed to various contrastive analyses of the core language systems conducted within different theoretical frameworks.  They will be also required to do practical contrastive analysis of English and Arabic.

22412  Translation II

This is a continuation of Translation I (315). It is a more advanced translation course focusing on texts characterized by complex structure and meaning.

22422  Shakespeare

This course provides students with an introduction to Shakespeare “ The Man, The poet’ and “ The Playwright”. Three selected plays representing different modes of writing are included in addition to a number of selected sonnets.

22423  Literary Criticism

The course aims at defining the aims and principles of literary criticism.  It deals with the theory and practice of literary criticism.  The theory comprises the various schools and critics from the classical age up to the present time.  The course also deals with a considerable selection of major critical viewpoints of various prominent critics.  In the practical part, students are guided in the writing or critical appreciation using the inductive method of criticism, and using the necessary literary terminology.

22431  Seminar

Seminar is a supervised research offered in the last semester of graduation.  Students are given a period of two weeks to choose an advisor in an area of interest.  The work continues during the semester in the form of sessions with the supervisor whereby students present their draft for editing and reviewing.  The final draft has to be defended before a departmental committee.

22436  TEFL II

This course is designed to give students the skills that they need to teach English effectively. The main goal of this course is to develop and implement ESL lessons.  More specifically, students will be able to:

1. Write a lesson plan with appropriate sequencing of activities.
2. Choose authentic spoken and written materials for a variety of lessons. 
3. Develop lessons using those authentic materials while maintaining language-related objectives.
4. Effectively manage a classroom by giving appropriate instructions for managing interaction.
5. Give implicit and explicit feedback as problems arise.
6. Assess whether or not lesson objectives are met.

22445  Drama

This is a genre course intended to teach the students the elements of drama (dialogue, action, plot, characterization, etc.) through detailed study of representative plays.  At least one classical play is studied, and some five or more other plays from various periods and literatures are discussed.  Particular attention is paid to the major types of drama, tragedy and comedy with some help from the theoreticians.  New plays are introduced each semester.

22331  Psycholinguistics

The main concern of this course is how to account in terms of linguistic theory for the understanding and production of speech and the acquisition of language by children.

22332  Language Testing & Evaluation

It focuses on theory and design of diagnostic, achievement, and proficiency tests of language performance, both standardized and teacher-made, with particular emphasis on test evaluation.

22333  Advanced Grammar

It is designed to introduce students to problem areas in grammar such as tense and aspect, embedded sentences, conditionals, the article system, prepositions and the adjectival and adverbial systems.  The focus should be on meaning and usage.  Application of these structures is provided through exercises that depart from the mechanical nature followed in pre-university study.

22334  Language Planning

This course explores issues related to the political, economic, and social dimensions of the ELT profession.  Themes such as foreign aid and the relationship between politics and language programs are emphasized.  The course also explores the relationship between language teaching and community needs and emphasizes the importance of extensive planning prior to the establishment of new language programs.  The course also describes the various types of EFL teacher training programs and their strengths and weaknesses.

22335  Advanced Reading

This course aims at utilizing advanced techniques and strategies used by successful readers.  Work extends beyond text into discourse tackling high level cognitive skills such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation (interpretation skills). Students will be exposed to versatile activities including skimming, scanning, rate, and comprehension, recognizing rhetorical patterns, discourse threads, implications, background knowledge, and summarizing.

22336  Classroom Interaction

This elective course highlights the important issues of input and interaction as they relate to classroom language learning.  It focuses on the major aspects of classroom talk which is a valuable source of input to language learners.  These aspects include teacher talk, learning strategies, participation and group work.

The course also provides training on how language teachers can set up activities and participant structure that will enable learners to interact actively with one another and with the teacher in order to learn the target language.

22337  Teaching English to Young learners

This course focuses on the principles of teaching English to children at the elementary level.  Cognitive, psychological and social differences between young and older learners are emphasized and the influence of these differences on language learning is highlighted.  The course looks at special techniques that could be effective in teaching children such as games, role-play, and drama.  The Palestinian textbook English for Palestine will be used as the basis for all suggested lesson plans, techniques and activities.

22338  English for Business Communication

This elective course integrates the four language skills required to function effectively in business contexts.  It is designed to meet the needs of English major students who want to prepare for business careers and to help them develop their business skills required to carry out all sorts of tasks in business.  The major focus of the course is to familiarize students with the basic skills, mechanics and strategies of face to face meetings, phone calls, job interviews, marketing negotiations, international trade, delivery and money matters.

22339  Materials Development

This course focuses on the review, development and integration of foreign language teaching materials.  It develops the students' ability to develop learning activities on the basis of visual aids such as the chalkboard, the overhead projector, audio and video materials.  The course also develops the students' ability to evaluate current materials implemented at Palestinian schools with the purpose of enriching these materials. 

22341  The Short Story

The purpose of this course is to introduce the students to the short story as an art form in its own right, a form that creates a special kind of intimacy between reader and the fictional world it depicts.  This course is a discussion of themes, literary techniques, and narrative strategies peculiar to the short story.  For this purpose, a series of short stories are read and analyzed.  The course also includes a discussion of the history of the short story and examines the difference between that form and the novel.

22343  Special Subject in Literature

This course is intended to give individual instructors the chance to pursue special subject in literature of special interest at the third year level.  Selected areas of interest are not covered elsewhere in the plan.

22344  Special Subject in Literature

This course is intended to give individual instructors the chance to pursue special subject in literature of special interest at the third year level.  Selected areas of interest are not covered elsewhere in the plan.

22345  Special Subject in Literature

This course is intended to give individual instructors the chance to pursue special subject in literature of special interest at the third year level.  Selected areas of interest are not covered elsewhere in the plan.

22346  Literature in the Classroom

This course investigates the role of literature in the language classroom.  In addition to being the vessel of human culture, civilization and thought, literature can also be used as a tool for language learning.  Students will be exposed to the various roles that literature can play in the classroom.  Additionally, they will be trained in the methods and techniques of presenting literary materials in the language classroom

22347  Poetry

Emphasis in this course is placed on the understanding and appreciation of poetry as a literary genre.  Special attention, therefore, is given to the elements of poetry and its terms to enable students to acquire the tools which would help them develop a deeper understanding of poetry.  Various forms of poetry are to be presented and closely examined.  These are selected from different periods in English literature, such forms include the sonnet, ode, ballad and the like.  A great portion of time is devoted to exploring and analyzing a variety of representative poems.

22348  George Bernard Shaw

This course examines the political, social, and economic situation of the 20^th century through studying the representative plays of Bernard Shaw.  Students will be exposed to the various aspects of the theatre through watching and imitating certain parts of the selected plays. 

22349  The English Essay

This course is designed to study the essay format including short stories, essays, literary writing through the ages, and the influence of various cultures on each other.  Students will also be exposed to writing multi paragraph essays when analyzing literary works.  

22413  Sociolinguistics

The objective of the course is to define three relationships between language and society and attempt to correlate language variety with social, cultural, psychological, and ethnic divisions.  It is on these language varieties that the course focuses.  It also defines the standard language in a more general world context.  Further, it deals with such topics as: language and sex, language and context, language and nation, language problems, language planning, bilinguals, language maintenance, language shift, and language attitudes.

22432  Semantics

The course is envisaged as a general survey of the principal arguments surrounding the definition of meaning.  The following areas are included history and scope of semantics; semantics and lexical grammatical structures, and semantics and logic.

22433  Historical Linguistics

This course focuses on the history of English language and changes in pronunciation, spelling, vocabulary, and syntax from the Anglo-Saxon period through the post-conquest period of Middle English and Chaucer to the time of Shakespeare and the increasing use of English as an international language.

22434  Discourse Analysis

This course presents various types of English texts and analyzes the different features of these texts.  Analysis includes the type of vocabulary, grammatical structures and organizational patterns used in these texts.  Examples of essays, short stories and poems will be used to clarify the different stylistic features related to the various texts.  

22435  Syllabus Design

This course looks at the theoretical and practical issues involved in syllabus design and curriculum development in the foreign language context.  It presents a historical review of various types of syllabi under various educational philosophies and paradigms.  It also investigates the various aspects of the communicative syllabus and presents different examples.  By the end of the course, students are expected to develop the knowledge and skill necessary for evaluating and enriching available syllabi as well as evaluating future ones.

22437  Language Pragmatics

This course introduces the domain of pragmatics in relation to other language components, i.e., semantics and syntax.  It will also show how pragmatic competency is related to linguistic competency.  As it essentially deals with conversational language, the speech act theory will be introduced with reference to the works of language philosophers like Austin, Searle and Grice.  To establish understanding of this field, some major theories will be introduced like Grice's cooperative principle (1972),  and Leech's Politeness principle (1983).  As pragmatics mainly deal with culture, examples of cross-cultural differences will be introduced contrasted with Arabic norms.  The contrastive studies in pragmatics will reveal its significance in relation to language teaching and translation.

22438  Practical Phonetics

This course is a continuation of the phonetics course. Its background is established in the prerequisite course, the objective should focus on further practice in the pronunciation of single words, phrases and sentences.  Practice in connected texts will also be of main concern.  Practice will be through listening, oral presentation and reading. Materials will be taken from different sources including the media and other academic texts. 

22439  Inquiry methods in the EFL classroom

This course provides an introduction to research design in the field of second language teaching.  It attempts to develop the students' ability to critically read and assess published research.  It also familiarizes students with the stages involved in the process of carrying out research on aspects of second language learning and teaching.

22440  Second Language Acquisition

This course presents the various theories of second language acquisition.  It also establishes the connection between the theory of language learning and classroom practice. 

22441  The Romantics

The course intends to cover the themes of the age, i.e., literary, historical, social, and political.  A great proportion of time will be dedicated to the study of extracts taken from the works of prominent poets, novelists, essayists and critics.

22442  The Victorian Age

The course briefly outlines the social and political trends of the age, and from this the theme of life in Victorian England is taken up through of the social reformers, the poets, novelists, and playwrights of the age.

22443  18th Century Lit.

After a brief examination of the historical, social, and intellectual background, this course will introduce students to the period’s main writers, with particular attention given to Swift, Pope, and Johnson. These are studied both for their individual merits and the ways in which they illustrate the characteristics of the age.  The course includes components on both eighteenth-century drama and the beginning of the novel.

22444  Special Sub. in Lit.

This course is designed to deal with thematic and stylistic approach, character analysis, tone and attitude of the required reading at the fourth year level.  This course gives the instructors the opportunity to teach their own preferred texts. 

22446  Masterpieces of Eng.  literature

This course is composed to address the impact of certain characteristics or human values such as love, pride, greed and ambition on human life through examining representative British and American literary texts which include drama, the novel, short story, etc. 

22447  Twentieth Century Literature

This course includes the study of various aspects of Modernism and Postmodernism through the study of British and American writers.  The historical and cultural outcome of the two wars, industrialization, gender, race, and identity would be addressed

22448  World Literature

The aim of this course is to introduce students to various literary texts from different cultures around the world; to understand that literature is a global phenomenon; to learn to identify the characteristics that distinguish the major literary genre-poetry, fiction and drama; to learn how to evaluate literature based on the concepts of theme, point of view, setting, symbol, tone; and to practice the skill of expressing all of these in critical and analytical writing.

22449  African American Literature

This course deals with the African American culture, struggle, slavery, and the civil rights movement.  Major writers as Right, Hurston, Hughes, Morrison, Angelou, and Walker are the main focus of this course.   Issues will be discussed through examining their representative writings.