IV. Decide if the following statements are true or false (correct the wrong ones):

1. Katrina, Ellie’s mother, named her daughter after a famous personage of a classical novel.

2. Will felt extremely uncomfortable driving to Royston with Fiona and Katrina.

3. Ellie wanted to give the owner of the shop (in Royston) a piece of her mind.

4. The owner of the shop was a middle-aged rocker with long and unwashed hair and savage-looking eyes.

5. After the incident Marcus had to go to Cambridge with his father.

6. Ali wanted Will to marry his mum.

7. Will, Marcus and Ali had outings together every weekend.

V. Express your viewpoint on the ideas enclosed in the following passages:

1. You are safer as a kid if everyone is friends. When people pair off….It’s more insecure….I just don’t think couples are the future. (p. 276)

2. Marcus…. had friends, he could look after himself, he had developed a skin – the kind of skin Will had just shed. He had flattened out…..But all three of them had to lose things in order to gain other things… (p. 278)

VI. What do you think of the philosophy worked out by Marcus in the novel? Do you agree that “couples are not the future” and people should build sort of “acrobatic pyramids” to feel secure in their life?

Assessment

Assessment is an integral part of teaching and learning. The most important aims of assessment are that it should support curricular goals and encourage appropriate student learning. Assessment process is best described as internal, because the assessment tasks, strategies and tools are designed, developed and applied by lecturers of Linguistic Text Analysis. Lecturers are best placed to assess the work of their students the assessment model supports the professional judgment of the lecturer in deciding the levels of achievements of individual students.

This system of assessment, known as “criterion referencing” or “criterion-based assessment” is one of the pillars of education philosophy and policies. It is based upon pre-determined criteria that all students should have access to. Assessment criteria are used when the assessment task is open-ended. Each criterion concentrates on a particular skill that students are expected to demonstrate. An assessment objective describes what students should be able to do and assessment criteria describe how well they should be able to do it. Using assessment criteria allows discrimination between different answers and encourages a variety of responses. Each criterion is described by definite descriptors. With the help of such system of assessment, students are informed about what is expected in a task, an assignment or examination. By having the criteria of assessment on hand, a student doesn’t need to guess what he/she needs to do to get good results [3].

The course presupposes formative and summative assessment types. Formative assessment controls the current development of students’ skills via various tasks and discussion activities. Summative assessment monitors the level of performance achieved by the students by the end of the course. For this type of assessment students present their final projects on the book they have read.

The progress of each student is assessed according to the following 4 criteria:

Criterion A	Introduction	7
Criterion B	Content	7
Criterion C	Technical accuracy	7
Criterion D	Personal response	7
Total	28

Lecturers have to transfer total number of points into 5-grade traditional assessment system for Russian Federation according to the following scheme: 28-22 points: «5»; 21-15 points: «4»; 14-8 points: «3»; 7-0 points: «2».

Criteria	Descriptors
A (max 7)	In the linguistic text analysis introduction includes some information about the author of the book under study (some data about the writer’s biography, creative activities and outlook; information about the book – contextual data, the themes the author explores etc.).
B (max 7)	This criterion includes several aspects: short summary of the book, its main ideas, the setting (time and place of the events); the personages of the book (the way the author describes the characters and their relationships), the author’s attitude to the characters; the aspect a student has chosen to disclose individually (a character sketch of some personage, a particular issue or message of the book, allusions and references interesting for Russian readers etc.); the messages of the book.
C (max 7)	Students’ performance should be as free from technical inaccuracies (mistakes) as they can make them. There are two major points that lecturers pay attention to in this respect: vocabulary (varied, with the use of active vocabulary from the book); accurate use of grammar structures, tenses.
D (max 7)	The student’s evaluation of the book under study. Students need to expose a valid and deep understanding of the ideas, thoughts and feelings expressed in the book, including a considered personal response where appropriate.