This is a general English course for students at advanced level who want to improve all areas of their English language skills: writing, reading, listening, speaking and elements (grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, discourse). The main focus will be on helping you become more confident at using language in everyday and less familiar settings. Fluency (speaking a lot and quickly) and accuracy (not making mistakes) will be given equal importance.
This course will help you:
- Interact with others confidently and fluently at length on a range of topics using more idiomatic expressions and a wide range of vocabulary.
- Understand a wide range of more demanding, longer texts, and recognise implicit and nuanced meaning in them.
- Express yourself fluently and spontaneously without needing to search for the right expression.
- Use language flexibly and effectively for social, academic and professional purposes. Learn to produce clear, well-structured texts on complex subjects, with correct use of syntax, connectors and cohesive devices.
- Give presentations on a wide range of topics.
Which book will I use? What special features does the book have?
The course uses Navigate (Oxford). It is divided into 12 units. Each unit has two main input sections that cover grammar, vocabulary and four skills. Section three and four cover vocabulary and skills development for everyday situations matched to their CEFR level. An important feature of the book is the inclusion of documentary videos and Vox pops with authentic interviews of people discussing topics in the coursebook. This is aimed at helping students enhance their four skills by using authentic materials. Each unit ends with a review page to revise key language and skills. At the back of the book there is a useful grammar summary and practice exercises to help review. Navigate has been based on the Oxford 3000 to ensure that learners are only covering the most relevant vocabulary.
| Advanced A (Units 1-3) | Advanced B (Units 4-6) | |
| Topics – Change, Feats, Team
Vocabulary- time and speed, change, using a dictionary, phrases with adverbs, collocations for describing problems and solutions, collocations of perception and sound, behaviour and attitude, success and failure, prepositional phrases. Language- comparing, continuous forms, noun phrases, perfect forms, auxiliary verbs, articles. Skills development- predicting content of a text, report writing, vague language: approximation, taking notes, writing a summery, an informal talk, how writers avoid repetition, checking and rephrasing, writing a proposal. |
Topics – Responsibility, Power, Play
Vocabulary – Responsibility, Phrases with care, connotation, common phrases with relative pronouns, phrases with of to describe quantity, compound adjectives and nouns, preferences, leisure, relaxation and stress, words with more than one meaning. Language –Degree of obligation, passives, relative clauses, quantifiers, uses of would, verb patterns. Skills development- understanding word boundaries, writing a balanced argumentative essay, formal negotiations, understanding complex sentences, managing conversations, emphasis: inversion and cleft sentences, understanding reference, vague language, writing an online review. |
| Advanced C (Units7-9) | Advanced D (Units 10-12) | |
| Topics – Emotion and Reason, Plastic, Learning
Vocabulary – emotions, reacting to events, metaphor, properties of materials, phrasal verbs, formal and informal language, idiomatic phrases with will, higher education, three ways to create new words. Language – hypotheses, unreality, probability and speculation, participle clauses, Uses of will, the future. Skills development- understanding the links within a text, informal negotiations, comment adverbs, knowing what to concentrate on, speculating, comparing and contrasting, writing a problem solution essay or a report. |
Topics – New, Origins, Memory
Vocabulary – money, new and old, understanding idioms, adjectives and adverbs beginning with a-, food preparation, fixed and semi fixed expressions, special meaning of off, down and over, describing research and results, noticing, selecting and recording collocations. Language – noun phrases, positions of adverbials, adjective of position, whoever, whatever, wherever no matter, causative have and get, reporting verbs. Skills development- understanding writer stance, reaching a consensus, writing an email inquiry, noun reference, adding emphasis in speaking, writing a blog entry, understanding non-standard word order, talking about a magazine story, writing a magazine story. |