The course aims to provide students with the tools to understand the main points of reading and listening passages concerning common topics that they may encounter in everyday life, such as work, school, family. The course prepares students to deal with various situations that may emerge during trips abroad or in situations where the English language is used. In addition, the course prepares students to produce simple and fluid texts on familiar and personal interest topics, such as describing experiences and events, hopes and ambitions and providing reasons and explanations to support their opinions and plans. In addition to a general language preparation, students will have the opportunity to read and listen to passages related to the topic of education.

The course will provide students with typical grammar and vocabulary structures which will allow them to reach a B1/B1+ level:

present simple and continuous, action and non-action verbs

future forms

present perfect and past simple

present perfect simple and continuous

comparatives and superlatives

articles

modals of obligation and prohibition

modals of ability and possibility

narrative tenses

past and present habits and states

passives

modals of deduction

first, second and third conditionals

gerunds and infinitives

reported speech

quantifiers

relative clauses

question tags

Food and cooking/adjectives/travel/collocation of verbs, adjectives and preposition/-ed and –ing adjectives/entertainment and media/education/homes/work and jobs/shopping/technology/compound nouns/relationships/phrasal verbs

In addition, students will read and listen to passages concerning education topics such as:

-  British education

-  Children and technology

-  And other general education topics

Knowledge and understanding.
Students will be trained to understand reading and listening texts which have a high content of common language and are connected to the world of work. They should include descriptions of events, feelings and wishes communicated in personal letters

Applying knowledge and understanding.
They will be guided to apply their grammatical, lexical and content knowledge in order to demonstrate an intermediate level in the use of the English language in all language skills

Making judgments.
Students will be encouraged to express their opinions in situations that concern the educational field as well as common situations typical of the B1 level

Communication skills.
They will be able to use intermediate language to speak about familiar topics or personal interests, or common to daily life, for example, family, interests, work, travel, and current affairs. They will be able to link sentences in a simple way to describe experiences, events, ambitions and hopes. They will be able to give reasons for explaining their opinions or plans, as well as telling a story and describing their reactions.

Ability to learn (learning skills).
Students will be guided in exploring learning strategies that best meet their needs.

The teaching material prepared by the lecturer in addition to recommended textbooks (such as for instance slides, lecture notes, exercises, bibliography) and communications from the lecturer specific to the course can be found inside the Moodle platform › blended.uniurb.it

Students are recommended to use the CLA (University Language Center) if they need additional language support. Please consult the CLA website to check times of classes.

Teaching

The lessons will be frontal as well as with small groups or in pairs to create opportunities to encourage oral skills during the lesson.
 

Innovative teaching methods

Attendance

Attendance is not mandatory, however it is recommended that students already have an A2 + level in order to successfully reach the level indicated by the course, and that they undertake to study all the additional material that will be uploaded to Blended and to attend the course in a constant way in order to successfully reach the B1 level by the end of the course.

 

Course books

In addition to the additional material uploaded on Blended and the slides of the lessons, students will have to use the following texts for a more detailed study of the content, such as:

English Grammar in Use Fourth Edition, by Raymond Murphy, published by Cambridge University Press. The keyed version is recommended for personal study use.

English File Intermediate Digital published by Oxford University Press, for use both in the classroom and for personal study.

 

Assessment

Assessment of "knowledge and skills of understanding."

he written test consists of three parts to test the knowledge of grammar and vocabulary as well as the understanding of concepts and situations.

Part A: reading comprehension. Students will have to read a passage of about one page and will have to answer 5 questions that can be of the true, false or multiple choice type. 

Part B: grammar. 20 questions testing B1 grammar, of multiple choice or gap filling variety

Part C: vocabulary. 20 questions testing B1 vocabulary, of multiple choice or gap filling variety

Assessment of knowledge and
understanding applied.

When students have passed the written test with a minimum of 18/30, they will have to do an oral test which will consist of three parts:

Part A: talking about yourself and familiarity topics such as family, work, school, present, past and future

Part B: describe a photograph that can be linked to one of the topics studied during the course

Part C: talk more broadly about the topic and answer questions about the education texts they have read in self-study mode.

The oral test is marked out of 30.
The final mark will be the average between the two tests.
 

Disability and Specific Learning Disorders (SLD)

Students who have registered their disability certification or SLD certification with the Inclusion and Right to Study Office can request to use conceptual maps (for keywords) during exams.

To this end, it is necessary to send the maps, two weeks before the exam date, to the course instructor, who will verify their compliance with the university guidelines and may request modifications.