Contemporary English (2)

The course is a practical study of Contemporary English integrating listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills with special attention to grammar and vocabulary in relation to discourse analysis. The focus is on the grammatical categories used to describe real situations (tense, voice, non-finites) and imaginary situations (conditionals, subjunctives). The content of tense forms is analyzed along with their aspectual characteristics; passive forms (simple and causative) and voice functions are considered in light of pragmatic factors conditioning word order changes.

To further enhance all language skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening.

Contemporary English I.

Nouns: expression of number, countability, possession. Determiners: articles, demonstratives, quantifiers. The negative form. Reported speech. Dependent clauses. Passive voice. Verbals: infinities, gerunds and participles. Conditional sentences. The subjunctive, the ‘unreal’ past forms. The use of grammatical forms in various texts/contexts. Topics: science and technology, law and order, psychology and employment, money matters, travel and tourism. Journalistic, scholarly and literary texts. Editing, cohesion and coherance, discource markers, punctuation. Phrasal verbs.

Students are able to 1. Correctly identify and name the main grammatical forms and constructions. 2. Analyse the differences in journalistic, academic and literary texts. 3. Appropriately use different grammatical verb forms in various texts/contexts. 4. Use phrasal verbs, relate the grammatical form with its content. 5. Use collocations and synonyms. 6. Improve critical thinking by exploring and discussing intellectually challenging topics, use appropriate argumentation 7. Consider higher-level factors for the choice of a grammatical form, vocabulary, context and style.