2022/2023
English for Specific Purposes. Legal English - 3
Type:
Optional course
Delivered by:
School of Foreign Languages
When:
1-3 module
Open to:
students of all HSE University campuses
Language:
English
ECTS credits:
3
Contact hours:
52
Course Syllabus
Abstract
The programme is intended for 2nd-year students of the Higher School of Economics in the Bachelor's degree programmes “Jurisprudence”; and “Digital Lawyer”. The program aims at professional development of future lawyers’ soft skills: 1) language skills (oral and written professional English language, legal terminology and professional vocabulary; grammar of the advanced/proficiency level, active listening in the key typical situations of the legal discourse (an interview with the client, oral report to the superior, project work communication, mediation); efficiency in dealing with authentic legal texts; 2) cognitive skills (critical thinking, team communication and management); feedback (mutual monitoring and peer review); discussion (identifying a problem, arranging and monitoring discussion, participating in a discussion, developing an argument); presentation of interim and final results (projects, cases) in the form of report, review and presentation). The programme creates the ground for further success in any study of Law within the academic mobility. The programme is based on the Concept of Development of English-language Communicative Competence of HSE Students of non-linguistic specialties. The programme is developed under the Regulations on the Curriculum of the Academic Discipline of Higher Education Programmes – Bachelor's, specialist's, Master's Programmes of the Higher School of Economics and the Regulations for Interim and Ongoing Assessments of Students at the National Research University Higher School of Economics. The minimum requirement for successfully mastering this programme is B1 English language proficiency.
Learning Objectives
- to improve students’ ability to read and understand law journal articles, legislation, legal texts, legal correspondence
- to increase students’ comprehension of spoken English (legal topics in lectures, presentations, interviews, discussions, etc)
- to strengthen students’ speaking and writing skills in a range of situations typical of the study of law and the practice of law
- to develop an understanding of the law and consolidate language skills;
- to read legal articles, cases, law report;
- to write a brief case.
Expected Learning Outcomes
- comprehend and be able to discuss the effect of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act 1998 on case law.
- be able to deal with case law as a further source of law;
- distinguish between the common law and equity as sources of law;
- chart the historical development of the common law and equity;
- appreciate the role of custom as a further source of law;
- state the hierarchy of the courts and the types of case heard in the various courts.
- able to navigate a law report and identify its component parts;
- understand the meaning of case citations
- explain the use of the neutral citation system
- outline the operation of the doctrine of judicial precedent and explain whether a particular court will be bound by a particular decision
- determine the ratio decidendi of a case and distinguish it from the obiter dicta
Course Contents
- Sources of International Law
- Conventions and Treaties
- Finding Cases
- International Organisations
Assessment Elements
- Written AssessmentReading which includes the following: predicting, skimming, scanning, detailed reading, guessing unknown words from context, understanding text organization, recognizing argument and counter-argument; distinguishing between main information and supporting detail, fact and opinion, hypothesis versus evidence; summarizing and note-taking. Writing includes the following: legal document content and structure/law report (patterns of organization, paragraphing, discussion – argument/ counterargument, advantages and disadvantages, topic sentence and supporting ideas, coherence and cohesion, punctuation, quoting and referencing, avoiding plagiarism, bibliographies); functions (generalization, definitions, exemplification, classification, comparison and contrast, cause and effect, process and procedure, interpretation of data); style (passive constructions, avoiding verbosity) and punctuation. Listening includes the following: general comprehension (listening for gist, listening for detailed information, recognizing relevant/irrelevant information, signposting and importance markers, recognizing sentence connections: reference, addition, contrast, cause and effect, listing; evaluating the importance of information); lectures (identifying the topic and main themes, identifying relationships among major ideas, comprehending key information, identifying supporting ideas and examples, retaining information through note-taking, retrieving information from notes, inferring relationships between information supplied in a lecture, taking efficient notes from a lecture).
- Oral Assessment
- online
- Final Test.
Interim Assessment
- 2022/2023 3rd module0.25 * online + 0.3 * Final Test. + 0.2 * Oral Assessment + 0.25 * Written Assessment
