Course description
Our General English course is the ideal course if you want to speak more confidently and communicate more clearly. You will learn more than stock phrases – we will teach you the language you need to know in order to to speak with greater fluency in a wide variety of everyday situations, whether for leisure, studies or business. Your English teacher will help you work on your speaking skills by encouraging conversation through role-plays, debates and discussions. You will also be able to work on your Writing, Reading and Listening skills, as well as grammatical accuracy, sentence structure, punctuation, effective word choice, vocabulary, idioms and phrasal verbs.
Course outcomes
By the end of this course you will be able to:
– Read and understand language and descriptions of topics from a variety of texts
– Write about impressions, feelings and experiences
– Discuss various topics and give explanations and reasons for opinions, past actions and future plans.
– Recount the story of a book or film
– Understand and apply rules of English grammar in everyday contexts, including the use of nouns, adjectives, verbs, prepositions and tenses
– Develop vocabulary connected with topics such as leisure, entertainment, current affairs, work and employment, travel, home, relationships etc
Sample syllabus
Beginner level:
– Basic small talk including ‘How are you’
– Numbers 1 – 100, counting skills, telephone numbers
– Alphabet
– Spelling skills
– Give name & personal Information
– This, that, here, there, There is, There are
– Basic descriptive adjectives
– Basic prepositions use
– Difference between singular and plural
– Question and negative form etc
Elementary level:
– Introducing yourself: Verb Be, Present Simple and Continuous, Countries, Nationalities, Number, Routines
– Talking about the Past: Past Simple, Auxiliary verbs, Regular and Irregular Verbs, Past Continuous
– Talking about your origins, childhood, events in the past
– Talking about life experiences: Travelling and holidays, Past habits and Routines
– Present Perfect and ‘Used to’
– Talking about plans and arrangements
– Making requests and offers, asking for permission
– Talking about possible situations etc
Intermediate level:
– Topics: Travelling, Transport, Work, Free time, Family and Friends, Describing people, Science and Technology, Relationships, Education, Image, Food and drink, Money, Ambition, Environment, Sport, History, Inventions, The future, Communication, Crime
– Grammar: Present Tenses (review), Past tenses (review), Perfect tenses, Comparatives and Superlatives, Narrative Tenses, Reported/Direct Speech, Gerunds/infinitives,Future Forms, Relative Clauses and Pronouns, Modals of Deduction/criticism, Modifiers/Intensifiers, Conditionals, Passives, Expressing hypothetical meaning
– Functions: Describing experiences, Describing feelings and emotions, Describing hopes and plans, Developing an argument, Encouraging and inviting another speaker to continue, Expressing abstract ideas, Expressing agreement and disagreement, Expressing opinions, Interacting informally, Speculating, Taking the initiative in interaction etc
Advanced level:
– Listening: Listening activities based on recordings of native speakers with different accents talking at normal speed, and with some non-standard language usage.These will include casual conversations, discussions and talks selected from Advanced level course books, broadcast audio materials and films. Tasks will include standard listening exercises: (FCE and CAE types) as well as oral and written summaries
– Reading: Reading activities based on complex texts from online newspapers, magazines and Advanced level course books. Tasks will include standard reading exercises (FCE and CAE types) and oral and written summaries
– Writing: Exercises to develop Writing Skills at FCE and CAE level. Text types include summaries, narratives, letters and emails, opinion and discursive essays, reports, descriptions and reviews
– Speaking: Debates, presentations, discussions
– Grammar: Verb tenses, reported speech, modal verbs, passive, linking words, conditionals wishes and related forms, emphatic structures
– Vocabulary: various topic related vocabulary (feelings, health and medicine, education, crime, etc). Word formation, collocations, idioms and phrasal verbs
Proficiency level:
– Idioms and phrasal verbs
– Word formation: suffix endings
– Prepositional phrases
– Phrases: nouns with related verbs
– Homophones
– Abstract nouns
– Pronunciation: contrastive clauses etc
– Aspects of the future
– Degrees of likelihood
– Noun/verb/adjective stress
– Neologisms
– Gender-specific words
