Monash College Unit Guide

LANGUAGE IN THE MEDIA (MCD1440)

Purpose

The aim of this unit is to develop students’ English language skills and critical literacy in reading, writing, listening and speaking through responses to visual and print media.

This unit forms the preparatory English language component to the Part 2 Effective Writing units and introduces topics relevant to Media and Communication Studies.

Prerequisites

Nil

Learning outcomes

On completion of this unit, students should be able to:

1. Identify and apply oral communication strategies suitable for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences and identify and apply language appropriate to a range of communicative functions and discourses.
   
   
2. Apply listening and reading strategies to identify topic, main ideas, gist, specific information, and inference in response to a range of text types including Australian TV soaps, films, news and current affairs programs, documentaries, and radio programs, newspapers, magazines and a short novel.
   
   
3. Use critical judgement when listening and reading by identifying purpose, opinion, voice, tone and inference, and apply this awareness appropriately in spoken and written form according to audience and communicative purpose.
   
   
4. Identify and apply discourse features of a range of written text types including newspaper and magazine articles and features, letters to the editor, film reviews and a short novel.
   
   
5. Identify errors in own speaking and writing and develop an individual language study plan to improve grammatical accuracy and fluency.
   
   
6. Apply vocabulary building skills such as guessing meaning from context, building word family groups, differentiating between formal and informal language.
   
   
7. Give an oral presentation and lead a tutorial discussion.
   
   
8. Take effective notes when reading and listening in order to summarise, paraphrase, and synthesize information for own communicative purpose.

Assessment

Assignment: 60%
Examination: 40%

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