International Foundation Certificate in Computing

The course covers the key aspects of writing an essay. These include features of academic style, the planning process, structuring an argument, summarising, paraphrasing techniques, referencing, avoiding plagiarism, and drafting and editing. Emphasis is given to the logic underlying Western academic writing conventions, rather than simply looking at the procedural aspects. This is supported by work on the main areas of English grammar, with a particular focus on improving grammatical range and accuracy in students’ writing.

Reading skills are also developed. Textual analysis enables students to learn about cohesion, extend their vocabulary, read for gist and specific information, infer meaning, as well as develop summary skills. The texts generally focus on a background to Western thought and culture, taking into account ancient Greeks and Romans, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the influence of modernity, feminism and Marxism. There is an emphasis on how to use reading in writing: to learn from other writers’ style and using their points as evidence for students’ arguments.

Please Note: English Language Development modules are only available for students whose first language is not English.

To enhance listening skills, the course makes use of a wide range of texts, drawing firstly on commercially produced EAP materials to help students acquire the skills of listening for gist and specific information and taking useful notes. Later, the course moves on recordings from Goldsmiths library as well as BBC radio shows. Students are exposed to a range of challenging and interesting recordings related to the arts, current affairs, media, education and aspects of British culture. Many of the recordings are relevant to subjects studied at Goldsmiths, for example race and ethnicity, representation, identity and culture. Where possible, the recordings are exploited for vocabulary development.

To develop speaking skills, students will have to research and give seminar presentations and lead the class through discussion of their chosen topic. They will receive input on effective seminar techniques and functional language. There is also ongoing feedback on their presentations.

This module aims to provide basic problem-solving strategies relevant to compute programming, by controlling the definition and use of algorithms to control data and achieve a task. This module is designed to be taught concurrently with the Foundations of Computer Programming module to students with little or no experience with computer programming. It complements the bottom-up tendency of the syntax based Programming module by providing a top-down view of programming.

It is expected that this will increase students interest in and understanding of algorithms, and clarity and efficiency when programming, which are fundamental when pursuing a career in Computing.

This will introduce you to some basic yet fundamental mathematics that underpins many of the information technology and software systems of today.