Level 4: B1+ CEFR

AUDIENCE: This course is intended for learners who demonstrate developing ability to use English independently. 

GOALS: The course focuses on developing language skills and strategies that enable learners to understand, talk about, and exchange information on familiar, concrete topics (e.g. topics of specific personal or professional interest) as well as on some unfamiliar or more abstract ones (e.g. culture, art). 

TYPES OF WORK: Students are exposed to extended, factual, as well as propositionally and linguistically more complex written and listening texts (e.g. articles, opinion papers). They train to identify their overall structure, specific details, main points, and the interrelationships between ideas. Through individual or group work, students learn to participate in interactions on a wide range of familiar and other topics, listen actively, and express their opinions in a structured way (e.g. personal storytelling, discussions). Also, they continue to engage in controlled and semi-controlled pronunciation activities and speaking tasks (e.g. presentations, discussions) to review English sounds, recognize natural speech phenomena and intonation patterns. Students practice multi-paragraph writing (e.g. reports, product reviews) with emphasis on enhancing clarity, coherence, and prominence of the main points. In addition, they work on developing vocabulary depth (e.g. collocations, synonyms/antonyms), expanding thematic vocabulary (e.g. education, science) and clause repertoire, practicing reported speech, and new uses of modal verbs. 

OUTCOMES: At the end of the course, students understand structural and content aspects of texts of a fairly complex nature with more ease. They engage in language production with noticeable clarity, fluency, and increased attention to pronunciation, grammatical, and word choice accuracy, as well as adequate structure, and coherence. 

ASSESSMENT: Students’ performance in this course is assessed through graded homework assignments, quizzes, unit tests, midterm and final level exams.