Degree Structure
College
Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Department
Foreign Languages
Level
Undergraduate
Study System
Courses
Total Credit Hours
123 Cr. Hrs.
Duration
4 Years
Intake
Fall and Spring
Language
English
Study Mode
Full Time
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Important Dates
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Degree Overview
To obtain a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Language and Literature, the student must complete 123 credit hours. These hours are University Requirements (UR), College Requirements (CR), and Program Requirements (PR). The allocation of the credit hours is shown in the following table:
What You Will Learn
Upon the successful completion of the B.A. in English Language and Literature program, students will be able to:
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Describe the sounds of English and pronounce words clearly and legibly in terms of segmental and supra-segmental features.
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Analyze words into their respective constituents and differentiate sense relations between lexical units.
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Analyze sentences into their basic constituents and produce well-formed sentences of various levels of complexity.
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Analyze language at the semantic, sociolinguistic, and discoursal levels.
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Write with clarity, precision, in a variety of forms and for a variety of audiences, well-organized paragraphs, essays (narrative, descriptive, comparative, etc.), reports or research papers.
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Differentiate between the major teaching methods and techniques and apply the appropriate teaching method/techniques in teaching specific language skills, taking into consideration language learning principles and styles.
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Prepare valid tests of different types to assess the various language skills.
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Read a variety of literary genres critically and proficiently to demonstrate in writing or speech the comprehension, analysis, and interpretation of those genres.
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Translate and interpret a variety of text types from English into Arabic and vice versa, using proper terminology and appropriate style.
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Use research skills and procedures to conduct research and deliver written and oral presentations.
University Requirements
College Requirements
Degree Requirements
Course Description
Courses offered by the English Language and Literature Department are designated by the code (0202ABC) where 02 indicates the College and 02 the programs. Course descriptions are given below.
| 0202108 | Extensive Reading | (3-0:3) |
| This course aims at training students in the area of reading skills with the purpose of helping them read and understand long reading selections. It also exposes them to different genres of rhetoric. It attempts to enrich students’ stock of vocabulary and help them read faster and understand more through a set of carefully designed comprehension activities and through directed classroom discussions. In addition, it attempts to help students develop critical reading strategies, identifying key information, figuring out meaning from context, skimming, scanning, inferring, and paraphrasing. | ||
| 0202109 | Advanced Language Skills | (3-0:3) |
| This advanced skills course aims at enhancing the students’ knowledge of the forms, meanings, and functions of some major grammatical structures as they are used in contextualized settings and provides them with extensive practice to foster their understanding of such structures. The course also aims at integrating grammar with writing and vocabulary to enable students to use these structures and skills accurately and appropriately in their speaking and writing. | ||
| 0202110 | Speech Communication | (3-0:3) |
| This course initially aims to develop self-confidence to speak in public within the student body. As this is achieved, the course will also focus on (a) accuracy, clarity and fluency in using spoken English in both formal and informal contexts; and (b) listening skills in academic settings, such as in seminars, lectures or debates, as well as in social contexts. The overall aim is to develop students’ communicative competence and performance. | ||
| 0202111 | Basic English | (3-0:3) |
| Basic English is a 3-credit hour course with no prerequisites. It aims at helping learners to achieve an overall proficiency in English Language. The course uses a multi-skill approach that helps students to grasp the Basics of English language, with a special focus on reading and writing. It also lays emphasis on oral communication skills and writing using authentic material, relevant situations, and different language functions. | ||
| 0202112 | English for Academic Purposes | (3-0:3) |
| This course focuses on academic reading and writing skills, including extensive work in reading comprehension and retention. Students will practice identifying topics, determining the main idea of a text, recognizing the supporting details of a paragraph, recognizing authors’ writing patterns, and understanding new vocabulary through context clues. Emphasis is given to the rhetorical structures of the cause and effect essay. | ||
| 0202113 | English for Humanities | (3-0:3) |
| English for Humanities continues to integrate the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing as well as building vocabulary. The primary goal of the course is to help students build up their communicative and accuracy competences. That is, the ability to communicate in English according to the situation, purpose, and roles of the participants, where authentic communication is taught through everyday situations related to different aspects of life. Also, the students are exposed to the language structure, where certain grammatical points that are regarded necessary to a solid background are reinforced. | ||
| 0202114 | English for Media | (3-0:3) |
| English for Media, an intermediate-level course of English, builds on the foundations established in Basic English and English for Humanities. The goal of the course is to expose students to a range of media-related fields such as newspaper articles, and advertisement, and to concentrate on areas that are most relevant to students in the field of media. The course builds the students’ communicative competence together with functions, notions, grammar, hedging and boosters and lexical bundles necessary for their oral and written skills. The course also hones critical thinking skills such as classifying, making inferences about purpose and audience and drawing conclusions while it promotes the application of key learning strategies such as applying prior knowledge, scanning for specific information, skimming for main ideas and getting meaning from context. Authentic communication and the variety of high interest topics and content through Active Learning (AL) activities foster student participation in English and build confidence in students to assess their progress and be accountable for their learning. | ||
| 0202121 | English for Medical Sciences | (3-0:3) |
| This competency based course aims to enable students of Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy, and Health Sciences to communicate effectively in English, orally and in writing, using the medical terms in their respective fields. The competences include patient and population care, knowledge, evidence-based practice, life-long learning and interpersonal communication skills. Students will be familiarized with the structure of medical terms and the principles of constructing, analyzing and pronouncing them. They will also be trained to read medical articles and reports, summarize/outline them and rephrase medical statements in their own words. Students will also be trained to infer the meaning of medical terms from the context. They are also expected to write coherent and cohesive paragraphs and medical reports on topics related to their majors. Special attention will be given to oral presentations and patient-doctor dialogues. This course also aims to develop students' general academic skills, critical thinking capacities, and independent learning skills. Academic vocabulary and relevant grammatical structures will be highlighted and practiced. Students are also expected to apply this knowledge to understanding texts in their fields of study. | ||
| 0202130 | French Language I | (3-0:3) |
| The course is designed for students with no prior knowledge of the French language. It targets the fundamental language needs of students and gives them the necessary tools for immediate communication in French. The students will learn to listen, speak, read and write French at beginner level. They will be familiarized with a variety of topics related to everyday life in French through a communicative based language use and activities. | ||
| 0202207 | Technical Writing | (3-0:3) |
| This ESP course is skills-based, content-based, and task-based. It is intended for Engineering, Sciences, and Computer Science students, and it will enable them to increase their proficiency in finding and managing technical data and writing several genres of technical documents for the workplace, namely memoranda, letters, reports, applications, and research projects. | ||
| 0202212 | Research Paper Writing | (3-0:3) |
| This course introduces students to the tools and techniques of collecting and interpreting information for the purpose of writing a research paper. Students select a topic and assemble a bibliography and create a plan for a research paper on the chosen topic. Students learn how to organize material and integrate outside sources into a substantial paper. | ||
| 0202213 | Short Fiction | (3-0:3) |
| This is an introductory course to short fiction or the narrative art, its types (novella, short story, parable, fairy tale, tale, etc.) its elements (plot, character, setting, point of view, theme). The course also includes a selection of representative works of fiction from the earliest times to the present, covering different cultures and languages to highlight the development of this genre, its diversity, and vitality. | ||
| 0202218 | Drama | (3-0:3) |
| This is an introductory course to drama. Students will be introduced to the history of drama from ancient Greece, Roman time, Medieval British Drama, Elizabethan theater, Restoration Drama, and the modern period. Students will read a variety of modern American and British dramatic texts. The course will also deal with different elements pertinent to the dramatic form: comedy, tragedy, tragic comedies. The course will also explore some terms related to drama such stage directions, protagonist, antagonist, dramatic irony etc. The course will also highlight the characteristics of modern drama. When possible, students will watch performances of some of these dramatic texts and discuss them as performances and texts. | ||
| 0202221 | Middle Eastern Literature | (3-0:3) |
| This course is designed to introduce students to Middle Eastern issues through the literary works written by men and women in the major languages of the Middle East (Arabic, Persian and Turkish) that are available in English Translation. These works, which include poetry, short stories and plays, will be analyzed within their social contexts and a critical reading of them will help students identify the fundamental assumptions and ideologies underlying these literary products. | ||
| 0202222 | 20th Century American Literature | (3-0:3) |
| This course is a survey of the American literature in the 20th century. It gives special attention to the forces that shaped American literature of the time, such as modernism and imagism. Some of the important events of 20th century include first and second world wars, the Vietnam war, the great depression, and the civil rights movements. Students will read and discuss the literary works of the period and the aesthetic and social forces that shaped them. | ||
| 0202223 | 20th Century British Literature | (3-0:3) |
| This second-year course is designed to introduce students to the main stylistic innovations and themes in British literature, focusing primarily on the first half of the twentieth century. Major writers of that period will be surveyed along with the main genres. To contextualize this literature socio-culturally and historically, the spirit of the age and its intellectual trends will likewise be emphasized. Lecturing will be kept to a minimum. Students will, therefore, be well advised to read extensively in secondary sources currently available in the library and online. Handouts and study guidelines prepared by the professor will cover major issues and concepts. | ||
| 0202226 | Poetry | (3-0:3) |
| This is an introductory course to English poetry, its types, its forms, and its elements. The selected representative poetic works aim to sharpen students’ awareness of what constitutes poetry as opposed to other literary genres. Poems will be discussed so as to reveal their salient features, the devices employed, and the meaning they add to the reader’s experience. | ||
| 0202227 | Critical Reading and Writing | (3-0:3) |
| Critical Reading and Writing introduces students to the critical, systematic processes through which they can develop and support their own ideas as well as evaluate the strength of ideas put forward by others. This course includes practice in inductive and deductive reasoning, presentation of arguments in oral and written form, critical analysis of arguments in written form, and analysis of the use of language to influence thought. The course also applies the critical reasoning process to other fields of study that students are involved in. | ||
| 0202230 | Inroduction to Language | (3-0:3) |
| This course is an introduction to language and linguistics. The main goal is to introduce students to the major concepts and fields of linguistics. The course examines theories and speculations about the origins of human language and about acquisition of the mother tongue. It studies the nature of language systems: sounds and sound combinations (phonetics and phonology), words and word-formation, morphology, syntax, and semantics. It also introduces the hyphenated sub-disciplines of linguistics: psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, etc. | ||
| 0202231 | Syntax 1 | (3-0:3) |
| The aim of this introductory course is twofold: (i) to give students a thorough grounding in the basics of sentence structure, and (ii) to acquaint them with the essentials of syntactic argumentation. The course progresses through a range of relevant topics of increasing difficulty from the building blocks of language – words and phrases – to constituency and argumentation. Students will be given ample exercises in the analysis and construction of English sentences. | ||
| 0202232 | Phonetics and Phonology | (3-0:3) |
| This course introduces students to basic descriptive and practical levels of the English sound system. It aims at exposing students to such phonetic and phonological topics as principles of articulatory phonetics, IPA transcription, natural classes of sounds, phoneme distribution, syllable structure, word stress, phonological rules, and phonotactic constraints. Moreover, attention is drawn to the problems that speakers of Arabic have learning English pronunciation. | ||
| 020223 3 | Morphology and Lexical Studies | (3-0:3) |
| The course introduces students to inflectional and derivational morphology, mechanisms involved in word formation: affixation, borrowing, compounding, conversion, etc., their implications to the English lexicon, and units larger than the word. Students also learn how words are related to each other and how their meaning changes over time and across dialects. English Language is the language of focus for this course. | ||
| 0202310 | Advanced Writing | (3-0:3) |
| The course focuses on enhancing the writing skills acquired in less advanced courses in the study plan. Students are expected to show greater sensitivity to diction, style, and tonality, and to exhibit more intellectual vigor in the development of their ideas. Topics include some controversial issues and require a sophisticated level of thinking and planning. In particular, the students will learn to write a variety of essay types well. | ||
| 0202311 | Debating | (3-0:3) |
| Debating is a one-semester course for students with an interest in developing their skills in public speaking. The course will provide instruction in various forms of debate and public speaking activities. It will also cover the characteristics and roles of different types of reasoning that are utilized in oral argumentation, including deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, inference, and more. | ||
| 0202320 | World Literature in English | (3-0:3) |
| This third-year elective course introduces students to literature written in English by authors from different countries, including, but not necessarily limited to, Nigeria, South Africa, India, Pakistan, China, Peru, Chile and Russia. The course focuses on the political, literary and historical contexts of these works. Readings of individual texts will seek to identify themes common to the work of authors writing within a postcolonial framework (such as exile, psychic and linguistic displacement, cosmopolitanism, hybridity) while also attending to the specific ways each author responds to the particular dilemmas of his/her cultural situation. | ||
| 0202322 | 19th Century British Literature | (3-0:3) |
| This third-year elective course is designed to cover the nineteenth-century main epochs, the Romantic and the Victorian. The focus of the Romantic component is principally poetry and prose nonfiction; while the emphasis of the Victorian part of the course is on both, poetry and novel. The emphasis on the novel will in particular be placed upon the development of that genre over the course of the century and on the different responses made by novelists, poets, and writers of prose nonfiction to the pressures of the period. Broad themes and issues to be covered might include individualism, industrialization, empire, and nostalgia. To contextualize this literature socio-culturally and historically, the spirit of the age and its intellectual trends will likewise be emphasized. | ||
| 0202323 | Literature of Antiquity | (3-0:3) |
| This course is designed to introduce students to the foundations of Western thought and literary imagination as seen through the major classics of Antiquity. Greek civilization will be studied through representative texts that underscore the extent to which the Western literary tradition draws upon its ancient sources. Literary techniques, genres, themes, and recurring images will help elucidate the connection between the Age of Antiquity and later periods. Generic differences between epic and tragedy will be emphasized. Further, the development of Attic (Athenian) tragedy will be studied in some details. | ||
| 0202331 | Syntax 2 | (3-0:3) |
| This course extends students' knowledge from Syntax 1. The basic objectives of this course are (i) to familiarize students with the basic goals and assumptions of generative grammar, (ii) to train students in the fundamentals of syntactic analysis and syntactic theorizing and argumentation, and (iii) to familiarize students with the major syntactic structures of English and their relevance to linguistic theory. It also makes students aware of the close relationship/ interdependence between structure and meaning. | ||
| 0202332 | Sociolinguistics | (3-0:3) |
| This course is designed to give students an appreciation of the relationship between language and society and language and culture. Students will learn about a variety of topics dealing with the general theme of language in its social context. Topics include: regional and social dialects, style, context and registers, diglossia, bilingualism, speech communities, speech accommodation, language variation, language change, language and culture, language and gender, politically correct language, etc. | ||
| 0202333 | Second Language Learning | (3-0:3) |
| This course introduces students to the fundamental theories and issues of second language learning to prospective teachers. It offers an overview of current psychological, linguistic and sociolinguistic issues concerned with understanding the processes of learning a second language. Possible implications and applications in language teaching drawn from second-language learning theories will also be discussed. | ||
| 0202334 | Error Analysis | (3-0:3) |
| This course familiarizes students with the main concepts and issues in error analysis. It also introduces them to the steps of conducting an error analysis i.e., identifying, describing, classifying and diagnosing errors. It covers several topics including error versus mistake, significance of errors, attitudes towards errors, the process of analyzing errors, error gravity and error correction. The errors discussed in the course are those made by Arab learners of English. | ||
| 0202340 | Translation Principles | (3-0:3) |
| This is a course in translation principles and methodology. It examines the problems and difficulties that arise in translating and it explores various approaches and solutions. Students are given practical training in the translation of a wide variety of texts. They also learn how to analyze and assess different translated works and test the efficacy of their own translation. | ||
| 0202341 | Media Translation | (3-0:3) |
| This course applies the principles of translation learned in the pre-requisite to a variety of newspaper, radio, television, and public relations texts; attention is paid to the formats of hard news stories, feature articles, editorials, spoken and written language. | ||
| 0202421 | The Modern Novel | (3-0:3) |
| This fourth-year course is a survey of later 19th and 20th-century English novels, which – as a literary genre – comes of age at the turn of the twentieth century. Students will explore why the novel is so well suited to the expression of the particular concerns of the modern era. They will also understand why modern novelists are so concerned with using their fiction to construct meaning and identity. | ||
| 0202422 | Early American Literature | (3-0:3) |
| This course covers some major works in early American literature. It gives special attention to the forces that shaped American literature of that time: the westward movement, transcendentalism, the multi-cultural relationships, slavery, the Civil War, etc., but most of the time will be spent on reading and discussing some of the important literary works of that period. Students will read, discuss, and write about major samples of some of the poetry and fiction written in this period. | ||
| 0202424 | Shakespeare | (3-0:3) |
| This course begins with an introduction to the life and times of Shakespeare. It will cover ten sonnets and two plays, which may be vary in accordance with the choices at the beginning of every other Semester. Students are required to read the sonnets and plays in advance. They are strongly urged to read the plays themselves and not any summary, paraphrase, or translation of it as exams and quizzes will be based on knowledge of Shakespeare’s own text. Students will also be required to participate in class discussion. | ||
| 0202425 | Literary Criticism | (3-0:3) |
| This course offers theoretical and practical approaches to some of the major questions raised in literary criticism. It traces how critics defended, repudiated or adjusted some of the following themes: the place of the poet in society, the relationship that the form of a literary work bears to its subject matter, the effect of literature on its audience, the proper function of literature, and the relative values of literature and science. This course also investigates the nature of artistic imitation and the psychology of art. | ||
| 0202430 | Contrastive Lingustics | (3-0:3) |
| This course aims at introducing students to the methods of comparing and contrasting two language systems or subsystems and cultures. It highlights the similarities and differences between Arabic and English at the various language levels. The course also focuses on the application of CA to language teaching and learning as well as to translation. | ||
| 0202431 | Methods of Teaching English | (3-0:3) |
| This course aims at familiarizing students with the common methods and techniques of teaching English as a foreign language. It consists of three components: (a) methods and techniques of teaching English, (b) principles of teaching English (c) teaching language skills (d) micro-teaching and classroom observations. The theoretical component provides students with information on methods in practice, techniques, classroom management, lesson planning and teaching receptive and productive skills. Visits will be arranged to government schools. Such visits allow students to observe methods being put into practice in real-life situations, thus helping students to see the reality of being a teacher. Students will be expected to produce analytical reports on these visits as part of their assessment. Students will be expected to give a minimum 20-minute English language lesson to their peers in class. | ||
| 0202432 | Language Testing | (3-0:3) |
| This course aims at acquainting students with the basic notions of language testing including the purposes of testing, types of tests, principles of testing, common test techniques and testing specific language skills as well as testing grammar and vocabulary. Students will also be trained to write and evaluate test items of different types. | ||
| 0202434 | Discourse Analysis | (3-0:3) |
| The features of written and spoken discourse are discussed; an exploration of the continuum as well as the dichotomy of spoken and written discourse; students learn to identify concepts like grounding, coherence and cohesion, topic and reference, and they learn how sentences can be manipulated to achieve these notions. | ||
| 0202441 | Literary Translation | (3-0:3) |
| This course provides students with a brief theoretical background pertaining to translating literary texts, and builds on what the students learned in the prerequisite course. It also highlights the various types of problems that translators may encounter in this field. Students will be given ample training in translating literary texts from different genres with special emphasis on figurative language, style, and aspects of creativity. | ||
| 0202445 | Practicum in Translation | (3-0:3) |
| This course introduces students to real world translation practice as it manifests itself in businesses, media centers, newspapers and government offices. Students choose a place to work at for the semester, where they translate a variety of texts and in accordance with the requirements of the training center. The course also focuses on translation ethics, work ethics, and proper translation practices. Furthermore, students are required to upload weekly reports on Taskstream and provide feedback on their progress. At the end of internship, each student submits a final report in which they provide their own experience, difficulties, and views about translation in the real-world as opposed to translation in the classroom. | ||
| 0202446 | Translation of Business Texts | (3-0:3) |
| This is an advanced translation course offered to students at the fourth-year level. It forms part of hands-on training the English Department offers to help students acquire skills in translation that are needed in the job market. | ||
| 0202447 | Translation of Legal Texts | (3-0:3) |
| The course applies the principles of translation learned in the pre-requisite and in other related courses to a wide variety of legal texts, focusing on specialized terminology as well as stylistic features of these texts. | ||
| 0202448 | Semantics | (3-0:3) |
| This course introduces students to the basic principles of lexical and sentence semantics as applied to modern English. Topics considered include notions such as context, reference, connotation, denotation, lexical semantic, collocation, sense relations, semantics and grammar, utterance meaning, lexical equivalence, synonymy, quasi-synonymy, homonymy, ambiguity, antonymy, polysemy, componential analysis. This course also expounds the principles of language use and introduces the notions of deixis, conversational implicature, presupposition, speech acts and conversational structure. It also examines violations of the rules of meaning (anomaly, metaphors, and idioms). | ||
| 0202449 | Practicum in Teaching | (3-0:3) |
| This course provides students who are planning to teach English with supervised teaching experience. The focus of the course is the practical application of knowledge, skills, techniques, and practices of teaching English as a Second Language in real classroom settings. The course allows students to develop a better understanding of the teaching process by preparing lesson plans, having structured classroom observations, and writing a reflective journal. | ||
| 0202450 | Consecutive Interpreting | (3-0:3) |
| This is an introductory and practice-oriented training course in consecutive interpreting. It familiarizes students with the basic principles and procedures of consecutive interpretation. It also highlights the skills needed for consecutive interpreting such as listening skills, summarizing spoken material, note-taking and memory enhancement. The course also aims at developing the students’ repertoire of vocabulary in various fields. Students will be provided with extensive practice in note-taking and consecutive interpreting from English into Arabic and vice versa. | ||
| 0202490 | Graduation Project | (3-0:3) |
| This course is intended to consolidate research skills and methodologies acquired in previous courses. Students are expected to produce academically sophisticated research papers under the supervision of an instructor. The topics to be discussed will normally have the length of three to four thousand words, and should be related to the three main areas of specialization covered by the study program, namely, literature, linguistics, and translation. | ||
| 0202501 | Intermediate ESL | (3-0:3) |
| This course is intended for graduate students majoring in Law, Islamic Shari’a, Arabic Language and History where Arabic, the students’ native language, is the medium of instruction. It places special emphasis on the skills that the students will particularly need to pursue their studies / theses. In this connection, the course focuses on developing the students’ reading skills through engaging themes and intensive practice. The course further enriches the students’ vocabulary and provides them with some basic terms in their areas of specialization. | ||
Career Path
Graduates of the Department of Foreign Languages have a variety of career opportunities available to them, thanks to their proficiency in one or more foreign languages. Here are some potential career paths in the areas of Translation and Interpretation; Language Teaching; International Business and Trade; Diplomacy and International Relations; Tourism and Hospitality; Media and Journalism; Localization and Global Content Management; Intercultural Communication; Research and Academia; Humanitarian Work: NGOs Freelance and Entrepreneurship.
How will you make an impact?
Every student’s journey at UoS and beyond is different, which is why our Career & Professional Development team provides personalized career resources to help students make an impact for years to come.
