English, media, drama and writing

This Element has been designed to help students develop their academic literacy, and
research and communication skills in preparation for undergraduate study. The areas of reading, writing, speaking, and listening will be covered. ILSC also helps students understand the institutional culture, practices, norms and expectations of the UK higher education.

A subsidiary aim of this Element is to ensure that students develop transferable skills of
effective and professional communication to support ongoing study, as well as providing a
basis to foster career and life-building skills.

No previous technical experience is required for this Element, which provides students with
an introduction to practical ICT skills. This foundation will be needed for academic success
across many areas of higher education. The students will use industry standard office
productivity software and techniques to produce presentations, written assignments, and charts and tables in spreadsheets.

Alongside practical skills, fundamental topics surrounding technology use will be discussed,
together with societal and ethical perspectives. The Element will enable students to discuss
the main challenges facing society and consider the implications of their technology use.

By the end of the Element, students should have sufficient mastery of the Microsoft Office
productivity suite to allow them to plan and produce presentations, use functions and write
formula to display, format and analyse quantitative data and produce written assignments to a standard appropriate to higher education.

This Element aims to enable candidates to participate in and practice independent learning tasks for deeper thought and investigation as needed for Higher Academic pursuits. This Element is designed to teach, reinforce, and practice independent learning and critical thinking, as opposed to rote memorisation for success in University and professional life. An open-class forum of discussion is used to encourage critical thinking skills within academic and professional-facing contexts.

This Element enables candidates to invest in strategies that will deepen understanding and
interpretation of processes, motives, argument, rationale, credibility, and possibilities which
will then be applicable to a range of studies. Students will undertake research, based on an
issue related to their degree programme, to review the main points of examining an
argument in depth. They will learn to create a personal response that analyses the content
of the issue under study.

This Element explores significant moments of difference between cultures and subcultures
around the world. Students draw from their own cultural experiences as well as learning from others and lecturer-lead case studies, gaining the skills required to explore and articulate similarities and differences between different cultural practices, institutions and beliefs.

This Element will provide a platform for students to explore intercultural issues in
contemporary global society, describing the key concepts and components of culture.
Students will compare and contrast different cultures’ analytical frameworks. This Element
will introduce key concepts and explores various perspectives in intercultural studies,
covering different expressions globally and historically of power. It aims to make students
aware of and develop empathetic understanding toward other cultures and value systems.
The inter-disciplinary nature and critical thinking approach of the program empowers
students for a meaningful encounter and cooperative action with other cultures and systems.

This Element seeks to consider and critique different principles and theories about ethics. This course will investigate the status of several major ethical theories and claims and consider some practical ethical issues (such as global poverty and animal welfare) which are impacted by these theories. Students should critically think about potential ethical dilemmas and engage with difference value systems.

Ethics asks questions about claims in order to better grasp the nature of acceptable principles in behaviour and treatment. These ideas cover areas in reference to psychology, technology,
education, business, and the medical and legal fields. With respect to ethical questions, this element will investigate competing answers to an idea and critically engage with them to examine their strengths and weaknesses. Students should gain a broad understanding of how ethics can be applied to a variety of subject areas and what questions should be asked to evaluate validity.

This Element aims to introduce students, from a broad range of degree programmes, to psychology.
The main psychological approaches (cognitive and behavioural; psychodynamic; developmental, social and biological) will be discussed in relation to current psychological theory. Current and realworld applications of these approaches will also be discussed. Student will be given an introduction to psychopathology through the discussion of mental health disorders. In addition to these
approaches, discussion of the mind/brain separation will also be introduced via the psychological topics to provide students with knowledge of psychology as a humanities subject. Research methods and psychology as a social science will also be covered to provide students with an understanding of scientific research.

Composition and Style aims to provide students with a structured introduction to all aspects and stages of the academic writing process and various forms of writing to be undertaken.

It is designed to allow students the knowledge required for the preparation and completion of
written assignments within University and to University standards. This includes skills which apply to many writing disciplines including research and note-taking; structuring work; drafting and redrafting; editing and proof-reading; achieving an effective academic style; referencing; writing effectively under differing conditions; using feedback on your written work and grammar and punctuation. A focus around the writing process will be of emphasis with application to different kinds of written products. For the writer, these processes would correspond to the different creative stages of writing.