Elective Courses

Professional Writing in English 

This course aims to develop students’ effective writing and reading skills in professional English. The course focuses on effective professional writing in English and includes resumes and CV writing, different types of business letters, memos, reports, e-mails and e-mail etiquette writing, research reports. The course introduces the concept of focusing on audience analysis and readers’ needs, values, as well as the cultural differences of a specific type of audience and appropriate way of addressing them.

Interpersonal Communication 

The aim of the course is to help students become better communicators in informal and organizational settings. The course will focus on effective managing of personal and professional relationships with family, friends, colleagues, customers and managers. It will provide students with means for improving personal effectiveness in everyday situations by increasing their understanding of the theory and practice of interpersonal communication.

Lobbyists and Interest Groups

This course is aimed for all SEEU third year students who want to explore and gain knowledge for the role and the influence of interest groups and lobbyists. During the course the students will understand theimportance and the value of the interest groups, how beneficial are they in the democratic societiesand how much they can influence in theparliament, government, in public administration, in the public opinion and political parties, aswell. Another purpose is to analyze the position and the role ofthe interest groupsand lobbyistsin Macedonia and compare them with the role and the position of thesegroups in the United States of America and the European Union countries.The students will choose and visit one of the existing interests or lobby groups in Macedonia and write a case study for that.

Marketing Communication

This course focuses on contemporary approaches to marketing communications, and how they can be integrated with effective marketing strategy .This course is designed to introduce students to current trends of marketing communication and to equip them with necessary tools that will enable them to understand and evaluate marketing communication processes and practices. The course will focus on the five main marketing communication tools such as advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, public relations and direct marketing. The class is organized to let students understand theories and practices of marketing communication as well as allow them to asses, critique, and give advice to particular corporations where observations will be conducted. Namely, students will be given the chance to observe local organizations/corporations where they will asses the marketing communication tools that are being used by the same as well as produce a practical portfolio as an academic advice to the local organization observed. 

Advertising Communication: Production and Comprehension

The course will provide a comprehensive and practical insight into the whole net of activities that shape, give content and meaning to the complex process of advertising communication. It gives a panoramic view of the process subdivided into three categories: a) processes that precede the production of the advertising message (here taken as a metonym for the whole process) like market concerns, company’s image, USB, objective, previous advertising history etc, b) processes related to the shaping (encoding) and the communication of the message that concern the available resources and previous decisions and c) the comprehensive reception and reaction on the part of the audience. By the end of the course students will not only understand this communication better,  but will be able to practically apply the gained knowledge and skills into the production of a whole advertising campaign which is a general goal of the course.

Film Criticism 

The course first offers the students a general introduction to the film history and typology as a background to work with. It then presents some theoretical models as applied to the film, coming from various disciplines like Narratology, Audience reception, Genre criticism, Cultural criticism, Author theory, and alike. The third set of content that the course covers are other film related topics like adaptations, computers, cultural determinants like class, ethnicity, gender, age etc. The aim of the course is to give students the opportunity to approach films from different perspectives as to be able to speak and write more skillfully and argumentatively on film related topics.

 Humor studies 

The aim of the course is to make students aware of the way humor functions as to be able to discuss (orally and in written form) various humor related topics. It starts with a very brief over view of the 3 dominant theories (Superiority, Incongruity and Relief) and some humor producing mechanisms. Then it moves to examining humor present in different genres like (film) comedies, jokes, stand up acts, cartoons, comic stories etc. It also pays attention to humor’s relation to culture (how culture uses humor and what ideas and values it communicates with it) and finally the course examines humor’s occurrence and its use in everyday life, as well as professional environment.

Critical Reading and Discussion

Text-based and reader oriented, the course offers a continuous reading practice in both literary and non-literary texts covering variety of them like: short stories, fairy tales, folk tales,  myths, newspaper articles, columns, jokes, ads, pamphlets etc.  Having in mind the texts genre specifics and with no theory involved, the course asks the students to discover how topics and cultural categories like class, gender, age and alike are seen and constructed by the texts. The aim of the course is two folded - to examine the text meaning construction by critical reading and to be constantly improving debating and opinion forming and expressing skills.

Challenges and Perspectives for Macedonia on the Road to European Union

The aim of the course is to help students understand general and specific criteria for European Union Membership and the Accession Process. The course will focus on helping students recognize the integration steps that have been implemented so far; as well identity the main challenges and perspectives for Macedonia on its way to the EU.

Basic English Grammar 

Having in consideration the current situation with our English learners, I consider that acquiring the basic skills in English grammar is the most important thing to further one’s abilities in English in terms of writing and speaking. This is also based on the students’ needs and demands since I have quite a long experience in teaching English and I know pretty well that what my students see as the most problematic segment within the English language is exactly the grammar. Therefore, my course will especially dwell on the English grammar and will deal with tenses and other important grammatical structures in English.

Developing Oral Proficiency 

In this course students will be provided with opportunities to practice using language in a range of contexts. Students’ speaking skills will be enhanced through different activities that promote speaking like: information gap activities, think-pair-share, discussions and presentations, interactions with peers and teachers, asking and answering questions, debates, role plays, interviews and interpersonal communication. In order to have a good speaking class, students will work in a relaxed atmosphere, work in pairs and groups, and their different personalities and preferences will be taken into account.  Feedback and error correction will be provided to help facilitate the progression of their skills through self-correction, peer-correction and teacher-correction.

Developing Written Proficiency 

In this course students’ academic writing skills will be enhanced in a variety of ways.  Students will be enabled to communicate their ideas in a clear, fluent and effective way in order to produce a piece of writing.  There are many ways to teach writing but in this course the focus will be on process approach and language experience approach. Students’ academic writing skills will be developed through activities that promote writing like: writing different types of paragraphs and essays, starting from ‘micro’ level (word, sentence, handwriting, spelling, punctuation) and finishing with ‘macro’ level (content and organization). Also, students will be introduced to paraphrasing and citing rules as well as will be made aware of what plagiarism is. Giving feedback on students’ pieces of writing will involve self-correction, peer-correction and teacher-correction of content, organization and language errors.