The General English course is just that, general English as opposed to writing, job interviews, business focused vocabulary, and English presentations. It will be similar to Business English, but without the business words and phrases. We will look at pronunciation and intonation and look at methods and exercises that can help the student to improve on both of these. As well, we will look at grammar problems and review common errors.
Pronunciation deals with the way we say consonant and vowel sounds in English. If the student has some pronunciation problems we will work on this using some exercises (Phonics) as well as some illustration of mouth and tongue position when vocalizing some sounds.
Intonation is something else that we will work on that also has an effect on pronunciation. Intonation is the rhythm of English and it is caused by the emphasis placed on certain words and syllables as we speak. An improper rhythm can affect the understanding of a listener. If there is a need to work on intonation, we can work together on some intonation exercises.
For grammar we will cover the problems that the student has as well as the frequent problem areas. These will include the use of gerunds and “to” plus infinitives, subject verb agreement, prepositions, articles, and adjectives and adverbs. Another thing we will look at is other common mistakes that non-native English speakers make when they are learning English. This can include the improper use of words or sentence structures.
Vocabulary will also be reviewed and the content of this part of the course can be determined by the student’s needs and interests. As well we may look at writing in this course. If the student wants to do some work on improving their writing, we can add in some time to do writing exercises.
These are the things that we could or will cover in the General English Course
You can see my video talking about Business English and Business English Courses on John’s Online English’s YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lACoofdrwi8