Academic Reading Preparatory Course (HEC & SPS A1+/A2)

By the end of this course you will be able to:

• Identify the underlying structure of the academic text, particularly by recognizing the key words, key concepts, and relationships between parts of the text
• Recognize (passive knowledge) the most frequent grammatical structures of the academic text, and understand their function
  
• Deconstruct complex sentences in academic text
• Understand a broad spectrum of specific vocabulary

The coursework focuses on teaching you to recognize the form and understand the function of the structures below in a written text; you are not expected to use these structures actively (speaking and writing)

Linguistic structures typical of the academic text

• impersonal form
• past tenses
• passive form
• the function of the gerund and the infinitive
• most frequent conjunctions, pronouns, expressions typical of academic discourse
• complex sentences

Vocabulary

• lexical collocations
• frequent prefixes and suffixes in academic writing
• synonyms and antonyms
• nominalization
• figurative expressions

• General and specific reading strategies in a foreign language to facilitate the global comprehension of a text
• Comprehension strategies between languages
• Meta-cognitive strategies