What is included in the course?

This course develops students’ vocabulary and grammar skills at a lower level, but still aims to offer as much activation of language as possible, therefore ensuring that students have ample opportunity to consolidate their learning and gain confidence. 

In terms of reading and writing skills, students learn how to read effectively by learning and practising a variety of reading techniques. Students also learn to write accurate sentences, to link ideas together, and to write coherent paragraphs. Students practise a number of writing task, including writing formal emails, summaries, making notes, and describing data and processes. 

In terms of listening and speaking skills, students learn how to listen for main ideas and supporting detail, understand opinions, and make notes. Students also learn to control their voice when speaking using pausing to speak clearly and deliver a clear message. They also use these techniques to speak about a variety of topics, including asking questions in a spoken survey.

In terms of vocabulary development, in addition to building vocabulary through the topics studied, students also look at how words are constructed and connected together, as well as levels of formality.

What is included in the course?

This course includes a larger proportion of focus on language (vocabulary and grammar), while still maintaining a large amount of academic skills. 

In the language development part of the course, students learn how to use grammatical structures accurately and also extend their range of vocabulary which is appropriate to formal academic writing and speaking. Additionally, students also learn how to express academic functions such as comparing and contrasting, describing problems and offering solutions, and developing an academic argument. These areas of grammar, vocabulary, and functions are further used in the development of coherent, academic, written paragraphs. 

There are two main skills elements to the course; speaking and writing. In the speaking part of the course, students take part in a number of seminars, where they learn to discuss simple academic ideas with accuracy and confidence. In terms of writing, students learn to paraphrase and summarise academic ideas which offers opportunity to use and therefore consolidate the newly acquired language and skills.

What is included in the course?

This major part of this course guides students through the process of writing an academic essay based on information gathered from a number of set academic texts. Students are helped to understand several university-level texts and extract the main ideas through coherent note-making. The ideas within the notes are then organised through a process of selection, rejection, and synthesis to create a lesson plan to answer a set extended essay question. The essay is then written in two drafts with guided error correction to help students not only write more accurately, but also learn how to improve their own writing.

The minor part of this module focuses on speaking in a number of presentations, both presenting an academic argument and also delivering information which describes a diagram. 

Students learn to extract information from academic presentations.

Students’ vocabulary and grammar is improved through a series of lessons focusing on sentence structure and related grammar, plus a look at some functions which are essential to writing accurately, such as describing cause and effect. Finally, language is improved through the process of task-based learning, that is, the teacher highlights grammar, vocabulary and functions required to complete the tasks.