Syllabus

ENOS11 Contemporary English Language 1 is a comprehensive course which allows you to improve your English by giving you a practical understanding of the language and how to use it. Our teaching methodology enables you to learn how English is spoken and used in real-life, day-to-day situations. Focusing on the four skills (reading, writing, speaking and listening), you will practise speaking and writing skills along with sharpening grammar, vocabulary, and meta-language. Every lesson will be based on a specific topic or theme. The language skills and grammar are taught within the framework of the topic and serve to help you apply everything you have learned in a natural way. Teachers and academic staff will be on hand to give you ongoing support, encouragement, advice and feedback and to steadily guide you to B2 level of English competence. Your progresses is assessed continually.

This is a hybrid course beacuse it blends brick and mortar classroom with online learning. The primary goals of transforming this course into a hybrid are: a) ensuring the continuity of learning and b) facilitating student centered learning. The course will combine two learning environments each dealing with separate set of content and learning skills, which would also support each other in the ‘presentation-practice-production’ cycle: 

Face to face

This approach will primarily free up the class time for productive skills, especially for much needed speaking practice and simulation. It will also be a time for you to acquire and use meta skills through collaborative projects. More information about it in the Module chapter.

Virtual classroom 

Virtual classroom will act as supporting learning platform in a sense that it will contain the syllabi and all the course materials, something to fall back on in case you miss a class. In addition, it will be a home to skills such as reading and writing. Finally, the automated platform will serve as a testing tool. Being a social learning tool as well, it will be our class network. Embedded video conferencing software, instant messaging, white board, collaborative document editing and other groupware tools are invaluable for cooperative learning, as well as for one-to-one consults.

Course workload and ECTS

This course is awarded 10 ECTS, the acronym stands for European Credit Transfer System and is equivalent to 25-30 hours of work. This means you need to spend 250 to 300 hours working during the course to successfully complete it. The number of hours is divided between class work, online learning and individual work at home. This course has 5 classes per week which means you will spend 120 hours in the classroom. Online component of the course requires of you to spend 2-3 hours per week, which is adds to 80 hours during the school year. Rest of the time is left for your individual studying and reading at home.

Prerequisites 

In order to actively participate in all aspects of the course there are several requirements. First of all, you will need a working desktop or laptop computer with OS Windows XP or later, a viable ADSL, cable, or WiFi internet connection, a web camera, and a headset (earphones and a microphone).  If you do not own a computer, or have no internet access, there are several ways to bypass it. Firstly, all student dorms offer a free service of a computer center with internet access. Secondly, the school offers free WiFi as well as several computer stations in the Library.

This implies you having basic computer skills such as working with Internet browsers and Microsoft Office Suite.