About Presessional English Summer Course (5 weeks), Summer School - at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU)

This five-week course is taught by tutors in our Language Centre and helps students to improve and develop their general and discipline-specific English language and study skills, with a particular emphasis on writing and speaking, in order to allow them to function effectively in their postgraduate masters programmes.

Once you are accepted onto the presessional English course, you will not need to retake a language test. This means that you can concentrate on developing your postgraduate study skills.

The course runs for five weeks and is comprised of 102 hours of teaching and 78 hours of self-study.

Who should take a Presessional English course?

If you meet the language requirements for this course shown below, you can change your XJTLU masters offer to 'unconditional' for English level after applying for the presessional course. Students who meet the average score but miss the language score on one skill (reading, writing, speaking or listening) may also join.

Knowledge and skills

After the course students will be able to:

• write clear and coherent paragraphs;
• understand the purpose of an academic essay, its components and structure;
• understand the purpose of an academic report, its components and structure;
• read and identify key information from extended academic texts;
• summarise, paraphrase and synthesize key information from a variety of sources;
• use references and citations skillfully to correctly synthesize material from outside sources into original work;
• deliver an academic presentation;
• lead and contribute to an academic seminar discussion.

Structure

• This is a 5-week course: each week there will be 20 seminar hours, 2 lecture hours, 2 tutorials, and self-study. The 5th week is dedicated to marking and individual feedback tutorials on essays, reports, presentations and seminar discussions.

• Syllabus

  Topics will include, but not be limited to, the following:

  The writing process:

  • essay writing: from paragraph to essay - using a process approach;
  • report writing;
  • referencing (Harvard referencing system, primarily);
  • paraphrasing, quoting, integrating sources and summarising;
  • awareness of academic style and conventions.

  Speaking (skills and functional language, as appropriate, relating to):

  • giving academic presentations;
  • participating in and contributing to academic seminar discussions;
  • presenting texts and leading critical seminar discussions.

  Reading:

  • skimming, scanning, predicting, getting the gist, identifying important information, evaluation of texts (including a critical analysis of the author, genre, purpose, bias, etc.).

  Academic skills:

  • conducting secondary research;
  • critically evaluating sources;
  • creating PowerPoint presentations;
  • note-taking in lectures, brainstorming ideas and creating outlines.

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Entry requirements for this course

Contact Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) to find course entry requirements.

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View all courses at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU)

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