| Locations |
Newcastle (Callaghan Campus)
Sydney CBD |
| Duration |
10 weeks |
| Contact hours |
25 hours per week (Monday - Friday) |
| Overview |
The Upper Intermediate English program builds language skills necessary for participation in a wide range of social and vocational activities. |
| Entry requirements |
To enter the Upper Intermediate English Course students must have:
- a pass in the Language Centre Intermediate English Course, or
- equivalent results in the class placement test given on entry to the Language Centre; or
- an overall test score of 5.5 in the International Language Testing System (IELTS).
|
| Expected outcomes |
Reading
- Read and comprehend newspaper items and general articles
- Differentiate between main points and supporting information in texts
- Use reading skills to extract meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary
- Understand the meaning of referents
- Use understanding of syntax to comprehend longer texts
Writing
- Use a variety of sentence types to convey meaning
- Use and recognize coordinators and subordinators
- Write narratives, descriptions, responses to questions, etc.
- Write a plan for a paragraph
- Write well-structured paragraphs showing unity and coherence
Listening
- Follow the gist of audio and video material
- Identify key points from a lecture and audiovisual material
- Use context to generate meaning from unfamiliar texts
- Recognise levels of formality in spoken discourse
- Understand most social conversations at a natural rate of utterance
Speaking
- Use spoken English to fulfil all routine social needs
- Participate in discussions
- Draw on adequate vocabulary and conventions of English to communicate in a range of settings
- Prepare and deliver oral presentations to the class on familiar topics.
|
| Course content |
The course has an integrated syllabus which is predominantly skills-based, with grammar and culture components, and is organized into nine unit themes.
Reading
- Predicting
- Inferring
- Skimming
- Scanning
- Chunking
- Understanding vocabulary in context
- Understanding cohesive devices – referents, link words
- Understanding text structure - topic sentences and supporting information
- Interpreting/understanding graphs and tables
- Inferring meanings of unknown words
- Simple note-taking skills
Writing
- Sentences - Simple, complex and compound sentences, dependent and independent clauses/of time, reason and purpose
- Paragraph structure
- Extended writing
Listening
- Listening for gist/detail
- Inferring/Predicting
- Listening for text structure-main idea and supporting detail
- Extracting for key information
- Understanding discourse markers-Verbal (linking words, patterns) and Vocal (intonation and stress)
- Note-taking
Speaking
- Using appropriate language with correct stress and pronunciation
- Oral Presentations-Impromptu / Formal
- Interviewing/ Reporting
- Discussing/Giving opinions in small and large groups
- Initiating a conversation
Grammar
- Review of tenses/Parts of speech
- Passive Voice
- Requests
- Reported speech
- Gerunds and infinitives
- Countable/uncountable nouns
- Articles/quantities
- Conditionals
- Modals
- Relative Pronouns/ Clauses
- Appropriate Remedial Work
- Grammar Review
Textbook
Cunningham, S. and Moore, P. New Cutting Edge: Upper Intermediate Longman.
|
| Assessment |
Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking skills are assessed. Marks are weighted as follows: 25% assessment tasks in week 7; 25% class marks; 50% end of course assessment tasks.
Passing the course
Students must obtain 65% or more in three of the four skills. One may be in the 60-64% range. Each of the four components is of equal weighting. Students who pass the course are eligible to commence the Advanced English for General Purposes Course. |
