Social Work

The course starts from the basic elements of grammar, vocabulary and syntax of the language, within the sphere of Social Work, to then continue with the analysis of a more detailed and specialist discourse. The texts dealt with range from basic concepts of Social Work to more recent international studies in the field. The course consists of twelve 2-hour lessons supplemented with an e-learning component (blended learn-ing) by using various freely available interactive didactic websites and specialist websites of the Social Workfield. All this is supported by the e-learning site “CLaSS English”, which is available on the University’s Moodle platform. LessonOne • Introduction to the course and to the type of final examination. • Short presentation of some useful websites for English language learning. • Functions: greeting people formally and informally; introducing oneself and others; apologizing; talking about places, provenance and nationality; the English alphabet and spelling. • Grammar and lexis: Present Simple Tense of the verb to be; demonstratives; articles; singular and plural forms of nouns; possessive adjectives; noun groups. • Introduction to certain technical terms used in social work. LessonTwo • Functions: asking/answering about health/mood (e.g.How are you? Fine.), marital status (e.g.married, single), occupation and favourite colour. • Grammar and lexis: suffixes of adjectives and nouns, including the –ing form; Present Simple Tense of the verb to have and of other common verbs (not auxiliaries); other uses of the verb to have; “do” as an auxiliary verb; differences between certain adjectives (e.g. interesting/interested); object pronouns (me, him, etc.); the possessive “s”; colours. • Short presentation of phonetic symbols: Why are phonetics important? LessonThree • Functions: linking concepts with relative pronouns; asking questions and making comparisons; ex-pressing ability, possibility, obligation and uncertainty; asking for and granting permission; talking about the future or taking a decision affecting the future; giving orders and instructions; asking for and giving telephone numbers. • Grammar and lexis: relative pronouns (who, which, that, whose); Future Simple Tense (shall/will); the imperative; passive voice of the Future Simple and Present Simple; question words (who, when, why etc. and how much/many); comparatives and superlatives of adjectives (smaller, the smallest etc.); modal verbs (can, may, must etc.) including present conditional forms (would, could, should); telephone numbers; there is/are. Lesson Four • Functions: talking about non-specific quantities, states, conditions and past actions in a definite time; understanding a short scientific biography; talking about place. • Grammar and lexis: reviewing modal verbs; quantifiers (some/any/no, a little/little, a few/few, much/many, most, all, plenty, several, each/every, none); The Past Simple Tense; some adverb forms (the –ly suffix and expressions still/yet); prepositions of place (at, in, on, under, near etc.). LessonFive • Functions: talking about actions in past indefinite time or recent actions; using the English gerund in different contexts. • Grammar: Present Perfect Simple Tense (both active and passive forms); English gerund (one use of the –ingform in English verbs). LessonSix • Functions: asking for and giving numerical data; describing trends in graphs; understanding technical texts of numerical indicators. • Grammar and lexis: cardinal numbers and fractions; verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs to de-scribe graphs. LessonSeven • Functions: knowing when to use the verbs “make” and “do”; talking about routines etc. using adverbs of frequency; talking about actions in progress at the time of speaking or in the past; knowing how to use passives, the word “that”, prefixes words, reflexive pronouns and the “zero” pronoun; talking about two past actions one happening before the other. • Grammar and lexis: the difference between make anddo; adverbs of frequency; the Present Pro-gressive/Continuous Tense and Past Progressive/Continuous Tense in both active and passive forms; some “difficult” passives; prefixes of opposites and other types; the Past Perfect Tense in both active and passive forms; reflexive pronouns; different uses of the wordthat; the so-called "zero pronoun". Lesson Eight • Functions: talking about the weather, dates and periods in history; asking and telling the time; de-scribing people in simple ways. • Grammar and lexis: days of the week; months of the year; the seasons; the weather; the 12/24-hour clock; prepositions of time; ordinal numbers; adjectives for describing people. Lesson Nine • How to prepare and deliver a formal presentation. • A short PowerPoint presentation on social work in the United Kingdom. • Group activity: preparing and making a short presentation, in English, onsocial work in Italy. Lesson Ten • Grammar, lexis and syntax: four ways of talking about the future (the Future Simple, Present Pro-gressive/Continuousfor future plans; going to + infinitive for intentional future actions or predic-tions;the Present Simple for itineraries, timetables etc.); conditional forms with the Zero Conditional and First Conditional; revision of interrogative pronouns (what, where, how, etc.). Lesson Eleven • Grammar: possessive pronouns (mine, yours...); revision of the Present Perfect Simple; Present Perfect Progressive/Continuous (withsince and for); Past Perfect Progressive/Continuous; Second Conditional andThird Conditional, and comparisons with the First Conditional and "Zero" Conditional; probabilityusing the word likely. • Functions: expressing possession with possessive pronouns; saying how long one has been doing or not doing something; talking about continuous past actions which were interrupted; talking about possibilities and hypotheses. Lesson Twelve • Revision of the fundamental grammar structures and sector terminology. • Mock examination.

There are no prerequisites: the English course starts from scratch at the zero beginner level with basic no-tions of grammar, vocabulary and syntax of the language.

There are no compulsory textbooks for the course. The students can use the teacher’s own materials in the form of handouts based on texts in English taken from documentation of the Social Work field. The handouts can be downloaded from the supporting e-learning page, “CLaSS English” (on the University’s Moodle platform), where students will also find information on the lessons carried out (the language functions dealt with, the relative grammar, syntax and vocabulary elements, the links to websites for further reading etc., and indications on homework for the next lesson). An important feature of the course is the e-learning component (blended learning). This component envisages interactive English language courses, freely available online, as well as various websites containing didactic materials for English learning and/or specific texts of the Social Work field. The use of a good bilingual dictionary (e.g. Ragazzini, G., Dizionario Inglese-Italiano/Italiano-Inglese, Zanichelli, Bologna) is recommended, as well as a good English grammar book (e.g.R. Murphy, Essential Grammar in Use, Italian version, Cambridge University Press). These two texts are useful in the learning phase but cannot be used in the examination itself.

Attendance is compulsory.

The final examination aims to assess the students’ knowledge of English grammar, vocabulary and syntax, their ability to glean specific information from authentic texts of the Social Work field, translate short sentences from Italian into English, and understand the English pronunciation of specific terms. The examination consists of a one-hour written test and the candidate is required to do some simple exer-cises relating to texts taken from authentic documents written in English and pertaining to Social Work field. The exercises have a closed answer structure and assess reading comprehension, the capacity to translate semi-technical sentences from Italian into English on the topic dealt with in one of the texts, and knowledge of the proper pronunciation of specific sector terminology.

The course employs a combination of teaching methods. As well as traditional lectures the course envisages individual activities, pair work, group work, simulations, role-play and self-directed learning in the classroom. These activities are combined with supporting out-of-class multimedia activities (blended learning) also for the benefit of non-attending students.