English for Global Communication - Connect Program by Soliya

Course details

Soliya’s Connect Program is a unique cross-cultural education program that enables college students from the US, Europe, the Arab World, and the broader Muslim World to collaboratively explore the relationship between their regions with the aim of improving intercultural awareness and understanding. Student participants in this semester’s Connect Program will congregate into groups consisting of eight to ten students each.

Objectives and Description:

The course aims at bringing real life communication into the classroom. The face-to-face component gives students the skills, strategies, and confidence they need to communicate confidently in the online discussion specifically and outside the classroom generally.

The course builds learners’ ability to understand and use the natural English of International speakers by focusing on language pragmatics and functions. The on-line as well as the face-to-face component will help students to become more sensitive and effective communicators through universal topics and activities, and with special focus on intercultural competence as “fifth skill”.

By the end of the course, students should be able to:

• Hypothesize another’s point of view
• Listen for main ideas
• Provide evidence to support answers
• Organize and synthesize information from the listening
• Find and use synonyms
• Use idiomatic expressions and descriptive adjectives
• Take notes and them summarize main ideas
• Use new vocabulary in a guided conversation
• Role play asking for and giving advice
• Interrupt politely to clarify or confirm information
• Support answers with details identify and evaluate assumptions
• Practice correct intonations
• Analyze the most pressing global challenges with a particular focus on the dynamics and tensions between different cultures
• Explore key challenges in the relationship between Western and Pre-dominantly Muslim Societies
• Formulate questions and lead discussions about different and diverse topics.