This course is for participants whose level corresponds to level B1 or B2 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Please only register if your level corresponds to the course. Participants of our partner institutions and Unifr employees can contact us to take a placement test if they are unsure of their level. Unifr students are automatically guided to the placement test when registering for a course on MyUnifr.

Target audience
This course is open to learners of English at intermediate levels, from B1+ upwards. This level means that you have become independent and can already speak with some confidence on familiar matters; exchange, check and confirm information orally or explain why something is a problem; and that you can express your thoughts on more abstract or cultural topics such as books, films or music but you would like to improve comprehension of detail, expand your manner of expression, fill vocabulary gaps, and go beyond your current routine activities in English.

Course contents and teaching method

This course is for you if you want to have more complex conversations, e.g. giving fuller answers to questions; or help a discussion along by asking your own; keep going to produce comprehensible speech even if you have to pause and repair while planning your next few words; repeat a string of words back or rephrase what you heard to check you have understood; expand your speaking skills for less routine purposes and familiar settings; to learn something new in and through English, also by initiating an exchange and inviting others to take part.

There will be plenty of opportunities to talk and practise orally but also to share and develop your thinking about topics. Participating in spontaneous as well as structured or prepared speaking activities enables you to gain confidence as well as competence in speaking and to develop various oral as well as study skills. The content of the course will be organized around topics that the teacher suggests and that you can suggest. There will be authentic as well as course-book derived materials to listen to, read aloud, ask questions about, or activities to puzzle out together or quiz each other with; in pairs, small groups or in whole class exchanges. There will be a focus on how different purposes and audiences influence the way people speak at university.

Workload and evaluation
Attend regularly, participate actively in classroom activities, speak English aloud in class; join individual, pair and group work. Use self-study resources. No formal assessment, no credits.

Materials
A mix of didactic and authentic materials and tasks and self-study resources (e.g. dictionaries)

New linguistic experiences for expanding your oral repertoire in English and connecting familiar and new roles with speaking English to communicate spontaneously and academically. The course encourages you to become a more autonomous communicator, also by looking up information such as word meanings in a good monolingual learner’s dictionary instead of depending on machine translation.

The General Conditions for Participation in Language Courses apply. 

Director(s)