EFS Listening courses

EFS offers two listening courses: 693A, Listening Comprehension, and 693B, Advanced Listening and Vocabulary Development.

EFS 693A is focused on students who have difficulty understanding academic language, especially lectures. It includes practice in listening to audio and video recordings of lecture segments for the purposes of understanding the discourse structure, learning academic vocabulary and idioms, and practicing note taking. Because successful listening does not just involve language learning and strategy use, there is additional work with language processing, emphasizing the recognition of reduced forms in spoken English (e.g., "gonna" for "going to", "whaddaya" for "what do you", and so on). Other types of listening, in particular listening to conversational English, are also touched on.
        EFS 693A is only offered in Autumn Quarter because lecture listening proficiency is so crucial to academic success. The majority of students taking the course have been required to do so because of an insufficient score on their English Placement Exam; however, a number of others take it due to EFS recommendations or a perceived need.. The course is rarely taken by students after their first year.

EFS 693B is an advanced listening course, but it also differs from 693A in several fundamental ways. First, while there is still some work on academic English,  it expands the listening tasks to a wider range of genres, such as news, television comedies, and movies. Second, in the interests of individualization, students do independent projects, concentrating on specific listening genres or situations--because of this independent learning dimension, the course only meets once a week for 75 minutes. Finally, vocabulary development is emphasized more than in the 693A course.
        EFS 693B is currently offered every quarter except summer, although the majority of students take it in either autumn or winter of their first year. There is no specific prerequisite; however, students with a 693A requirement must complete that first, and 693A and B may not be taken concurrently. 

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