BSHS1001 · 4 credits · Foundation
English 1
The course everyone assumes they will coast through, and the one that quietly asks something nobody practised at school: English as a system — sounds, structures and stress patterns, not vocabulary.
- Lectures
- 71 · 30 h
- Prerequisite
- None
- Assessed by
- 2 quizzes + end term
- Unlocks
- English 2
Week 10 · common errors
He is having He has two sisters.
I discussed about discussed the plan.
One of my friend One of my friends is here.
— the errors that survive fifteen years of school
What this course actually asks
Descriptive, not prescriptiveEnglish 1 is taught by Rajesh Kumar, who heads the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Madras, and it is taught the way a linguist teaches: English is a system with rules you can state, not a list of dos and don'ts you absorb. That is why week 1 is vowel and consonant sounds rather than essay writing.
If you already speak English comfortably, the risk is not difficulty — it is familiarity. You will recognise every sentence in the lectures and still not be able to answer "how many syllables, and where does the stress fall", or "which part of speech is this word here". Those are the questions on the paper.
The single best predictor of a bad English 1 result is treating the lectures as background noise because the language is familiar. The course tests metalanguage: the words for talking about English, not English itself.
The other half of the course is skills — reading, listening, speaking and writing, one block each. Those weeks reward practice that you cannot do the night before.
The twelve weeks
Topics quoted from the official course pageRead it as two halves: weeks 1–3 and 5 and 8 are the language system, and the rest are the four skills. The two are assessed very differently.
Sounds and words. Vowel and consonant sounds.
Parts of speech.
Sentences. Phrases and idioms.
Speaking skills. Spoken English preliminaries.
Tenses and agreement in English sentences.
Reading skills. Skimming, scanning and comprehension.
Listening skills.
Aspiration, word stress and syllabification.
Speaking skills. Presentation and group discussion.
Common errors in English, and writing skills.
Writing skills. Basics of writing.
Writing skills. Professional writing.
Week 5, in one table
Twelve tenses are three times four, not twelve factsThe twelve tenses are a grid: three times — past, present, future — crossed with four aspects. Learn the four aspects once and all twelve follow. Click any cell.
Agreement is the other half of week 5, and it is where marks go. "One of my friends is" — the verb agrees with one, not friends. "The list of items was long." Find the real subject before you pick the verb.
How it is graded
May 2026 grading document · confirm against your course pageThe standard Foundation formula, with no bonus activities:
English has a different eligibility rule
Most Foundation courses let you count Mock Quiz 1 as one of the eight scores in the eligibility average. English 1 and English 2 do not: the grading document asks for the average of the best 5 of the first 7 weekly assignment scores alone, plus attendance at one quiz.
Practically, that means you have seven chances instead of eight, and each weekly assignment matters a little more here than elsewhere.
Weeks 11 and 12 are outside the eligibility window but inside the end term — and in this course they are the writing weeks, which carry very answerable marks.
Where the marks actually go
My read, from this course and from what people ask aboutWeek 8, entirely
Aspiration, word stress and syllabification is the most technical content in either English course, it sits after the eligibility window, and it is unlike anything else on the paper. It is also short. Skipping it is the cheapest mistake available.
Naming parts of speech in context
The same word changes class depending on the sentence — "book" is a noun in one clause and a verb in the next. Questions test the word in place, not the word in a list.
Subject–verb agreement with a long subject
Anything of the shape "one of the…", "the list of…", "each of the…" is designed to make you agree with the nearest noun instead of the head noun. Slow down and find the head.
Assuming fluency is preparation
Speaking English well and answering questions about English are different skills. The comfortable students are the ones most likely to walk in under-prepared.
Everything worth opening
Official first, then the free things that genuinely helpEvery link here was opened and checked on 23 September 2026.
Official
- Course page BSHS1001 on study.iitm.ac.in The week list, the instructor, and the prescribed books.
- Lectures English 1 (Basic English) — full playlist All 71 official lectures on the programme's own channel.
For the sounds weeks (1 and 8)
- Tool Sounds of Speech · University of Iowa An animated cross-section of the mouth for every English phoneme. The fastest way to understand what aspiration physically is.
- Tool Interactive IPA chart Click any symbol and hear it. Use it while week 1 is running, not after.
For grammar (weeks 2, 3, 5, 10)
- Practice British Council · English grammar Explanations with exercises, sorted by level. Free, and the closest free match to the Murphy book's style.
- Book Bas Aarts · Oxford Modern English Grammar A prescribed text, and the one that treats English descriptively — the same approach the lectures take.
For the writing weeks (10–12)
What to do in week one
Term starts 2 October 2026- Take week 1 seriouslyPhonetics on day one surprises people into disengaging. It is examinable, it is short, and it makes week 8 easy later.
- Do all seven early assignmentsEnglish 1 does not let you count Mock Quiz 1 toward eligibility, so seven is all you get.
- Start ten minutes of listening a dayWeek 7 cannot be crammed. BBC Learning English with the transcript open costs nothing.
- Keep an errors pageEvery correction you get, write the wrong version and the right one side by side. That page is week 10 revision, already done.
- Learn the four aspects, not twelve tensesThe grid above is the whole of week 5 once you see it as three times four.
- Check your course page's grading sectionEverything here is from the May 2026 document. The September 2026 one was not published when this was written.