Certificate in English Proficency

Course details

This 8 month full time programme aims to develop your accuracy, facility and fluency in the appropriate use of English. It is a pre-requisite to any of our diploma and advanced diploma programmes if you have not satisfied the English language requirement.

After successful completion of this programme, you will acquire:

• Practical and academic English skills necessary to succeed in everyday life and at the university level;
• A wide vocabulary;
• Confidence to use English in any situation;
• Grammatical control in situation and academic speaking and writing

What will I learn?

Speaking and Listening

You will learn foundational speaking and listening skills:

• learn pronunciation
• make introduction
• describing people and possessions
• ask and answer simple questions
• talk about shopping and clothes

Reading

You will learn basic reading skills:

• scan for key words and information
• skim for main ideas
• infer meanings of unfamiliar words
• grouping ideas and identifying topics
• understanding ideas in paragraphs

Writing

You will learn skills needed to write good paragraphs:

• practice sentence-making skills
• improve sentence structure
• write topic sentences
• understand concept of unity, support and coherence

Pre-Intermediate Level

Speaking and Listening

You will learn situational speaking and listening skills:

• practise pronunciation
• make introduction, greetings, clarification, requests, small talks, phone calls
• offer suggestions and advise
• learn library search skills

Reading

You will learn activities involving prediction, comprehension and language work:

• scan for key words and information
• build vocabulary
• understand the use of transitional words
• follow basic ideas in a reading text
• understand paragraph development
• introduce important collocations: preposition and construction and phrasal verbs

Writing

You will learn skills needed to write good paragraphs:

• revise grammar rules and sentence skills
• learn pre-writing skills: brainstorming techniques
• understand the writing process
• write and analyse strong paragraphs
• write topic sentences, supporting sentences
• understand the concepts of unity, support and concluding sentences coherence

Intermediate Level

Speaking and Listening

You will learn foundational higher level situational speaking and listening skills:

• continue to practise pronunciation
• express frustration, anger, hypothetical situations, desires
• make phone calls, order food,
• hold meetings and discussions shopping and bargaining skills

Reading

You will study passages of increasing difficulty and learn more advanced reading skills:

• identify the main point and important supporting information
• further analyse transitional and logic words
• understand complex sentence structures
• continue building vocabulary
• understand the different parts of a text and
• continue to study collocations how they relate to one another

Writing

You will learn skills needed to write strong essays:

• develop a strong essay: introduction, body and conclusion
• use transitional and logic words in writing
• identify and describe basic graphs and charts
• practice descriptive and narrative writings
• write letters of advice
• focus on prepositions, conjunctions and phrasal verbs
• learn to apply parallelism and consistency in writing
• focus on common grammar mistakes

Upper Intermediate Level

Speaking and Listening

You will learn skills necessary for succeeding at tertiary studies and in the business world:

• enhance pronunciation
• acquire effective presentation skills
• understand and use information to get a point across
• learn when to use formal and informal speech
• interview people and conduct survey
• acquire research skills
• fill out forms
• debate a point

Reading

You will acquire practical and academic reading skills:

• summarize a text
• revise skimming and scanning
• learn to paraphrase
• understand inference
• distinguish fact from opinion
• learn higher level vocabulary
• read for speed and comprehension

Writing

You will apply essay development skills to more complicated task:

• revision: brainstorming techniques
• continue emphasis on strong essay writing skills
• analyse and interpret complex graphs, charts and tables
• build, refute and weigh on argument
• analyse a simple condition or situation

Assessment and Examination

At the commencement of each module, students will be provided the assessment mode and weightings for the module. Most modules have several points of assessment, which may include assignments, tests, projects and final examinations

Graduation Requirements

Student must pass all levels of examination (Level 1, 2, 3 and 4) with grades A, B, C or D to be awarded the Certificate in English Proficiency.

Admission Criteria

Applicants must meet the following requirements:

• Be at least 16 years and above;
• Completed the relevant high school qualifications with a Pass in English subject within the 2 years after graduation.