The Environment
Nature of the course
The Environment is a 100% self-taught course; there are no classes.
Aims
The aim of The Environment is to enable students to learn:
- Basic information about the world, especially as it is seen through the lens of environmental matters, which will enhance their general knowledge and thus place them in a stronger position to deal with the comprehension of Reading and Listening texts.
- Important vocabulary that will help with their Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking.
Outcomes
A student who is successful in The Environment will be able to:
Demonstrate knowledge of a large number of words from the Environment Target Word List.
Assessment
The Environment is assessed by a single examination:
Final Exam 100% The end of Week 6
Corpus
The Environment consists of a large number of texts and target words. The texts are organized into thematic units.
- Environmental Systems
- Population and Urbanization
- Exploitation of Resources
- Resources and Management
- Environmental Health
- Environmental Damage
- Environmental Action
From these texts, and by using other resources, students need to prepare themselves for the examination (see the Sample Assessment). The assessment will consist of examination of the student knowledge of target words, which students are responsible to learn.
Target Words
In the course materials the student will be able to identify which words to learn for the exam in two ways:
- In the thematically organized corpus materials, you will see that some words are highlighted, which means that they will have a higher probability of being asked in the exam. (However, it does NOT mean that words which are not highlighted cannot be asked.)
- There is a word list, in Excel, which is called The Target Wordlist. This wordlist is a list of words that appear with high frequency in texts about the environment. (It is taken from: EcoLexicon: English corpus of the Environment domain, which is a text corpus of contemporary environmental texts. It consists of 23.1 million words and was prepared by the LexiCon Research Group at the University of Granada for the purpose of the development of EcoLexicon, a terminological knowledge base on the environment.)
Vocabulary Learning Skills
In The Environment (in contrast to The World Around Us - TWAU), there are no lessons run by a teacher, and no explicit treatment of vocabulary learning skills. However, students are strongly recommended to use the vocabulary learning skills that they studied in TWAU. To be successful in The Environment , students will need to study the required vocabulary systematically and energetically. The harder a student works on using their vocabulary learning skills from TWAU, the greater their chance of passing this course.
Study Tips
Because The World Around Us is a Self-Access course, and you will not have lessons with a teacher, you need to make extra efforts to engage with the course materials by yourself. Note that it is a very good idea to:
- Take part in course page Discussion Forums;
- Form a study pair with a study buddy; or find 2 or 3 study buddies and form a study group;
- Start reading about the environment in English; and when there is a text about the environment in your Reading Lesson or your Listening lesson, pay extra attention and think –“Oh, this is good, it will help me in the exam for The Environment.”
- If you are not sure about a concept, Google it, first to find and image, and then to read and find out more.
- Find Quizlets for vocabulary about the topics – see the corpus / thematic units above.
Other resources
Please see the Schoology course page for other reference materials including recommended websites.