Corsi di Studio del Dipartimento di Culture, Politica e Società

Students may take the course from the second semester of their second year in the degree program. To attend the course, you need to have an intermediate level of English proficiency.

REQUIREMENTS FOR EXAM ACCESS: To take this exam, students must have passed the written English Lettorato test. Once you have passed the Lettorato test, your mark will be valid for three years.
Students with an English language certification that:

a) is recognized as valid by the CPS Department,
b) corresponds to a B2 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, and
c) was obtained no more than three years prior to the month when they choose to take the Lingua Inglese (English Language) exam,

may get in touch with the teacher by email, attaching a copy of the certification. The teacher will review the document and confirm to the student(s) whether the certificate is acceptable or not. If it is accepted, the student(s) will be allowed direct access to the course and its related exam (no Lettorato test required).

Educational goals

The main goal of the course is to strengthen students’ language proficiency skills and provide them with a set of basic tools from English linguistics that will allow them to access resources produced in English within the fields and disciplines characterising their degree course. Students will be able to access and elaborate such information through critical and personal thinking.

In order to achieve this goal, students will need to develop:

• An intermediate level of English, corresponding to a B2 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages;
• The ability to read scientific texts written in English;
• The ability to take notes;
• The ability to analyse and grasp the main concepts of a text in English – particularly, of texts about topics concerning their own disciplinary fields;
• The ability to reformulate a text/present a scientific argument in a logical and consistent way.

Developing these skills will be useful to make valuable contributions in professional interactions, especially in disciplinary contexts related to their degree course.

Expected learning outcomes

Students will have to demonstrate that they have fully acquired and can critically apply knowledge of the course content, concerning both linguistic competence and other subjects related to their degree course.

At the end of the course students will have developed a greater awareness of linguistic and communicative features characterising the texts analysed throughout the course. They will also be able to elaborate on these contents by creating their own personal content.

The course syllabus will be developed by discussing topics related to the BA course in Social Work.

We will start from various types of content (written texts, multimedia content) to train reading comprehension, vocabulary development, basic linguistic analysis, synthesis and commentary, while addressing some basic concepts regarding the following topics:

Function of the social worker;

Migration flows, their causes and social/cultural implications;

The concept of the family and its various meanings;

Gender and equality;

Social conflict;

Crime and deviance;

Labour and work;

Disability;

Aging.

All lectures will be in English except for the first one, which will be dedicated to a general description of the course and initial assessment of the class group.

Please note: even though not mandatory, given the subjects and contents covered we strongly advise you to attend the lessons.

The course consists in 36 hours of frontal lectures (March-April 2024, Mondays 10 am-1 pm and Tuesdays 2 pm-5pm.

All students, both those attending the course and not, will be examined orally with an interview where they will be asked to address some of the topics in the syllabus and/or discuss a brief text extract relevant to the syllabus.

Not provided.

Office hours: in person or online (Webex), by appointment only. To book an appointment, please email the teacher.

Teachers do not reply to emails that are not signed, or inquire about information that can be easily retrieved through the official sources of our department. We would also like to remind you that emails are not a replacement for meetings during office hours.

It is recommended that students enrol for the course in this Campusnet page (“registrati a questo insegnamento” link at the bottom of the page) as well as in the corresponding Moodle course (“Vai a Moodle” button at the bottom of the page).

Course calendar

Classes are on Mondays from 10:00 to 13:00 and on Tuesdays from 14:00 to 17:00, starting from Monday 4th March 2024.

Mon 04/03/2024 10:00-13:00
Tue 05/03/2024 14:00-17:00
Mon 11/03/2024 10:00-13:00
Tue 12/03/2024 14:00-17:00
Mon 18/03/2024 10:00-13:00
Tue 19/03/2024 14:00-17:00
Mon 25/03/2024 10:00-13:00
Tue 26/03/2024 14:00-17:00
Mon 08/04/2024 10:00-13:00
Tue 09/04/2024 14:00-17:00
Mon 15/04/2024 10:00-13:00
Tue 16/04/2024 14:00-17:00