The Listening component of this course will provide strategies and tools to enable students to handle long, fast-paced technical lectures. Students will be exposed to organizational elements of an academic lecture focusing on `pre-', `while-', and `post-'listening comprehension tasks. Through lectures, presentations, multimedia and peer interactions students will hone and develop their English listening skills. Students will be required to participate in in-class dialogues that focus on building fluency, accuracy and improving pronunciation on topic related issues. Students will cultivate skills in leading discussions and speaking persuasively through debates, individual presentations and informal peer interactions. The note-taking component of this course will help students utilize and effectively implement various note-taking methods. The goal of this component is to understand the principles of effective note taking in order to create more focused, complete, and organized notes.