Main lexical content

• General (home, health, food, people, time).
• Work (including money).
• Social life (shopping, leisure, holidays, making friends, travel and transport, entertainment).
• Study.

Grammatical content

Learners need to gain an awareness and control of grammar and in particular they need practice in using:

• modal verbs in everyday speech.
• common phrasal verbs.
• the present perfect, and other higher level tenses.
• the conditional in everyday statements.
• reporting what other people say (using indirect speech).

Focus on vocabulary

• Quantifying (e.g. a packet of biscuits, a pint of milk etc.)
• Adjectives at B2 level: advanced descriptions of objects.
• Idioms.
• Collocations.
• Complementation.
• Word stems, roots, affixation etc.
• Internal changes ( e.g. long - length).
• Compounding in word formation (compound nouns and so on).

Phonetic content

• Pronunciation of vowels, consonants and diphthongs in English.
• Focus on differences and similarities of certain sounds.
• Rhythm, stress and intonation.

Reading

Students will practice their general reading skills and specific reading skills for the First (B2) and Advanced (C1) exams.

• Reading quickly to understand general content (skimming). Exercises on speeding up reading ability.
• Reading for specific information or gist.
• Study of a wide range of texts likely to appear in the Cambridge English First exam including: coursebooks at this level, reading-skills books at this level (graded readers), book and film reviews, modern articles in which people discuss their hobbies, unabridged short stories, novels, non-fiction, current newspaper and magazine extracts on topics of interest, and articles available on the internet. Students are encouraged to follow up on their hobbies and interests by reading about sport, cars, fashion, culture, etc. in English.
• Reading to recognise the main ideas and finer details within a text.
• Looking at extracts from novels which focus on characters' feelings.
• Deciding on the attitude, ideas and opinions expressed by authors in their work.
• Practice at guessing the meaning of unknown words in context. Deducing the meaning of unfamiliar phrases in context.
• Following the development of a long text.
• Providing verbal reviews of texts recently read for the Weekly Reading Scheme.

Writing

Learners are encouraged to record in detail new vocabulary using an efficient, personal system of their own choosing, following a class discussion.

• What do people write nowadays? A discussion.
• Everyday writing: shopping lists, SMS.
• Practice in paraphrasing (rewriting sentences from texts).
• Making notes while someone is talking.
• Improving spelling of ranges of words which can be formed from the same stem word e.g. compete, competition, including negative and plural forms..
• Specific writing tasks: postcards, notes, emails for invitations.
• Work writing tasks: letters, notes , simple reports of a factual nature for colleagues (with advice and evaluations).
• Real-life writing: TripAdvisor reviews, commenting on articles online.
• Using Google translate to check that your writing is correct. How to modify your writing to obtain a better result.

Speaking at B2 level

• How to keep up a conversation on a wide range of topics.
• How to ask for clarification.
• How to ask for factual information.
• Expressing opinions.
• Answering predictable questions.
• Giving reasons.
• Presenting arguments, using a limited range of expression.

Some grammar and vocabulary exercises will be consolidated orally using activities covering areas such as word formation, stem word transformations, paraphrasing, using synonyms, grammatical transformations of various types, saying things again 'in other words'.

Listening

• Learners need to develop certain skills: following talks, listening for specific information.

Exam specific.

• Oral test at B2 or C1 level.
• Familiarisation with the written parts of the exams (filling in the answer sheet, etc.).