Annotation
This class is intended for students who already have a high level of English (ideally B2 or above). The focus of this class will be to consolidate the students' pre-existing knowledge of the English language through discussion based on academic topics consistent with the syllabus. The aim is to increase the students' fluency and confidence with conversational English, both in terms of vocabulary and pronunciation ("accent"). This will be achieved through the study of articles and literature, with subsequent discussion. There will also be classes on some aspects of English that cause particular difficulty: advanced use of verb tenses, conditionals, phrasal verbs (particularly in an academic context), articles (a, an, the), etc. We may also work with texts taken from English literature (contemporary and older) to extend our understanding of English, particularly different registers of the language. This course has an accompanying Moodle site at https://dl2.cuni.cz/course/view.php?id=3467 where teaching materials will be made available.
If sufficient progress is made, and if the timetable allows it, the Upper-Advanced class will also offer some help with written English; both informal writing and academic essay writing techniques. The class will provide students with the groundwork for writing essays in a manner consistent with Oxford and Cambridge Board (OCR) level exams. They will learn useful techniques for complex written sentence and paragraph structure, as well as how to put forward judgements, the evidence to back up those judgements and the ensuing conclusion to their argument.