Download English Language (Base Course)

English Language (Base Course)
COURSE AIMS
The course plans to develop the student’s English language skills to the B1 threshold, defined by the Council of Europe
as the “independent use of the language” in the work environment.
TEACHING METHOD
The English language pre-course for students of all faculties who are absolute beginners or have only a limited
preparation will be held in September, before classes commence. Interested students can sign up for the course through
the SeLdA Office.
Students must take an entrance exam during the first week of lectures to level test their current knowledge of the
English language, based on the results of which they will be split into three groups:
 Good knowledge of English: admittance to the certificate exam in January;
 Fair knowledge of English: admittance to the accelerated 50-hour course;
 Poor knowledge of English: admission to the complete 100-hour course.
Students wishing to acquire or consolidate the receptive (listening and reading) and productive (speaking and
writing) skills needed to attain the B1 threshold and, therefore, to pass the certificate exam, are advised to combine
active class participation with individual study (also in the computer lab in line with the self-learning timetable).
COURSE CONTENT
To attain the B1 threshold, the student needs to:
a) Acquire the basic vocabulary needed to express themselves in everyday and work situations; and
b) Learn and actively use the main morphosyntactic structures of English:
• Word order and sentence structures;
• Regular and irregular verbs: present simple, present continuous, present prefect simple, past simple; future with
will, shall, be going to, present continuous and present simple;
• Present passive and past simple;
• Verb forms: affirmative, interrogative (interrogative structures with: what, where, when, who, whose, which,
how, why); negative, imperative, exclamatory; structures followed by the gerund or the infinitive; elliptical
forms;
• Modal verbs: can, could, will, would, shall, should, may, might, must, have to, need;
• Conditional phrases: Type 0, Type 1, Type 2;
• Nouns: singular, plural, countable/uncountable, compound nouns, genitive;
• Pronouns: personal, possessive, reflexive, impersonal, demonstrative, indefinite and quantifiers (some, any,
much, many, a few, a lot, all), relative pronouns;
• Adjectives: possessive, demonstrative, colour, size, shape, quality, nationality, predicative and attributive;
comparative and superlative forms; regular and irregular adjectives;
• Adverbs of time, of manner, of place; where to put the adverb in a sentence;
• Articles and partitive cases;
• Prepositions: of place, of time, of movement, of company, of agent; when placed after nouns, adjectives and
verbs;
• Cardinal and ordinal numbers;
• Alphabet;
• Spelling and punctuation.
READING LIST
Textbooks used in the 100-hour course of the Faculty of Economics:
All curricula except for International Management (3 university training credits):
D. GRANT-J. HUGHES-R. TURNER, Business Result Elementary Student’s Book EAN 9780194748001, Oxford University Press.
International Management curriculum (5 university training credits):
D. GRANT-J. HUDSON, Business Result Pre-intermediate, Oxford University Press 2009: Student’s Book (EAN 9780194748100).
- Textbooks used in the 50-hour intermediate course of the Faculty of Economics:
D. GRANT-J. HUDSON, Business Result Pre-intermediate, Oxford University Press 2009: Student’s Book (EAN 9780194748100)
Texts recommended for all courses:
N. COE-A. AMENDOLAGINE, Grammar Spectrum - For Italian Students: Student’s Book + CD-ROM EAN 9780194706025, Oxford
University Press/La Nuova Italia, 2005 2005 (grammar reference book); + BOOSTER 3000 (optional –supplementary exercises).
Indicatively, the following dictionaries are recommended (students are advised to obtain a recently published edition):
Beginner-Intermediate level (bilingual dictionary)
Dizionario Oxford Study per studenti di inglese, inglese - italiano, italiano – inglese, Dictionary + Trainer + CD-ROM EAN
9780194306485, Oxford University Press, 2005 (semi-paperback).
Garzanti Hazon Il Grande Dizionario inglese – italiano, italiano – inglese con CD, latest edition, Garzanti Linguistica (very
comprehensive).
Il Ragazzini + CD ultima edizione inglese-italiano, italiano-inglese, Zanichelli.
Beginner-Intermediate level (monolingual dictionary)
Cambridge Learner’s Dictionary (with/without CD), Cambridge University Press.
Intermediate-Advanced level (monolingual dictionary)
Cambridge International Dictionary of English, Cambridge University Press.
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Longman.
Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners, Macmillan.
Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, Oxford University Press.
ASSESSMENT METHOD
-
The exam is divided into three parts:
Reading and Writing (55% of total marks)
Listening (20% of total marks)
Speaking (25% of total marks; the student must pass the first two exams to qualify for the Speaking exam).
Attending students can take the mid-year exams, which replace the written part of the exam (reading, writing and listening).
NOTES
Full information on the SELdA activities can be found on the notice board and on the University website at
http://selda.unicatt.it/piacenza.