University Staff General and Academic English Course: 

This course will focus on the English language speaking, listening, reading and writing skills needed for success in daily life and in a range of academic contexts.

Course participants will learn about different English language-based cultures and improve their abilities to engage with a rich variety of materials and activities that have been used effectively and efficiently in the past to help university staff to achieve their English language learning goals.

The course will be divided between the four areas of speaking, listening, reading and writing: 

Speaking Skills:

In the speaking section of the course participants will:

improve their abilities to engage in daily and academic conversations

improve their abilities to formulate and present academic presentations.

discuss a wide variety of daily and academic topics

learn common idiomatic language that is often used by native speakers.

develop their abilities and confidence in order to feel more capable of communicating on a wide variety of topics with native speakers

Listening Skills:

In the listening section of the course the course participants will:'

develop their listening and note-taking skills

develop their understanding of common daily vocabulary as well as the academic vocabulary that is often used in university contexts

learn about some of the important differences between different Englishes such as American, Australian and British English

develop their ability to understand different accent and dialects so as to improve their overall listening skills

Reading Skills:  

The reading skills element of the course will focus on:

Speed Reading- Course participants will learn how to read faster so as to help improve their reading for daily and academic purposes

Guessing Unknown Vocabulary Items – Course participants will develop a range of strategies that will help them to guess unknown words from their context

Skimming and Scanning – Course participants will learn how to develop their abilities to extract the information they need from a variety of daily and academic texts quickly and accurately.

Reading, Note-taking and Summarising – Course participants will develop a range of reading skills which will better prepare them for reading for daily and academic purposes

Writing Skills:

The writing skills element of the course will include:

A review of exam writing skills – Course participants will learn about writing for success in TOEFL, GRE and IELTS contexts.

Course participants will develop their understanding of the differences between exam writing and academic writing.

Course participants will also learn about some of the differences between writing for general purposes and writing for academic purposes

Course participants will have the option to complete an additional academic writing project