Introductory Courses

The Introductory Courses have been designed to feed into the demands of either text-based disciplines (BA majors) or empirical qualitative or quantitative Social Sciences (BSocSc majors). DOH1002F and MAM1022F are taught by CHED staff and introduce students to academic writing and quantitative literacies. The second semester courses DOH1010S and DOH1009S are taught by HUM EDU staff and are designed to prepare students for their Humanities majors.

Showing recommended Introductory Course selections for the Extended Degrees

DOH1002F/S: Language in Humanities

Reading and writing practices in the academic environment are different from those encountered at most schools. In response to this, and the particular difficulties experienced by students for whom English is an additional language, this course provides a general orientation to language and learning practices and key concepts in the Humanities. It emphasises critical reading, note-taking strategies, essay writing and argument construction, textual analysis, and digital literacy. Classes are based on discussion in small groups and intensive writing activities on selected debates in the Humanities.

MAM1022F: Numbers in the Humanities

This course is intended to provide Humanities ED students with the necessary quantitative literacy to be able to understand and express appropriate quantitative ideas, which may be presented in text, tables, charts and graphs.  The aim of the course is to give students an appreciation and understanding of simple mathematical and statistical ideas in social science contexts and to develop their ability to write about such quantitative information.  Some examples of quantitative ideas to be mastered in the course include:  percentages, ratios, ways of representing change, descriptive statistics, data representations and the use of spread-sheets.

DOH1009F/S: Concepts in Social Science

This course aims to involve students in an active and critical engagement with social science texts and concepts, with an emphasis on those issues most pertinent to the Southern African context.  It aims to explore key concepts and methods used in different social science disciplines in order to facilitate students’ critical thinking, reading, writing, numeracy and research skills.

DOH1010S: Texts in the Humanities

This course aims to help students with reading texts and producing texts.  It will give students the tools to critically analyse texts – to identify the what, who and how of texts – and it will provide them with examples and frameworks to help them create texts themselves.  It will explain the principles of argumentation, and the meaning of ‘discourse’ and how these principles can help students who are working with texts in the Humanities.