Level 3: B1 CEFR 

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

GOALS: The course aims to develop linguistic ability to understand and communicate in common routine and non-routine situations  on topics that are familiar, of personal interest, or pertinent to everyday life (e.g. storytelling, weekend plans). 

OBJECTIVES: Individually or in groups, students engage in descriptive, and explanatory tasks (e.g. in presentations), express their opinions and attitudes with adequate support (e.g. in oral discussions and written, online comments or reviews) and devote attention to socio-cultural appropriateness of language use. In addition, in the context of controlled pronunciation practice and speaking tasks (e.g. presentations, role plays), students continue to train on perception and production of sounds and sound clusters in English as well as on word-and-phrase-level stress. They practice recognition of the general structure and important details in authentic, written and listening texts of varied length and complexity. Also, students are exposed to and enabled to recognize and use a wider range of word families, informal, and formal vocabulary of increasing complexity. Particular emphasis is given to types of sentences (e.g. conditionals), as well as to perfect tenses, modals and high-frequency phrasal verbs. 

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

Student Learning Outcomes

After the successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

1. Use varied sentence structures and formal and informal vocabulary to share information/news, and engage in approval/disapproval, agreement/disagreement, and invitation/refusal acts.

2. Identify the general structure and important details in authentic written and listening texts of varied length and complexity.

3. Write multiple-paragraph text types, such as a personal statement, a movie review, or an opinion post by using accurate and varied sentence structure and some complex register-sensitive vocabulary.

4. Identify and activate new word families, informal, and formal vocabulary of increasing complexity.

5. Identify and practice types of questions, if-clauses, perfect tenses, modals, passive constructions, and some high-frequency phrasal verbs.

6. Review how to perceive and produce English sounds and word endings (e.g., -ed endings); identify thought groups, and contrastive stress in the context of controlled practice and assessed speaking tasks (e.g., presentations, role plays).