Certificate of Proficiency in English

Course details

Language is central to students' intellectual, social and emotional development and has an essential role in all key learning areas. The learning experiences provided in this Certificate of Proficiency in English Course will assist students to become competent in using the language effectively in a range of contexts. Competence in English will enable students to learn about the role of the language in their own lives and in their own and other cultures. They will then be able to communicate their thoughts and feelings, to participate in society, to make decisions about personal and social issues, to analyze information and viewpoints, to use their imagination and to think on the meaning made with language.

English is one of the preferred languages among people all over the world and has been adopted as a Second Language (ESL) or Foreign Language (EFL) by some of the countries in the world e.g. Singapore, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and China.

CSM Academy has established a strong network in countries such as the People's Republic of China, Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, Republic of India, Islamic Republic of Pakistan and Socialist Republic of Vietnam for the Singapore market through national and international collaborations. Building on this was a keen desire to provide the Singapore market with cohorts of non-native speakers of English manpower through the provision of th Proficiency in English course.

What will I learn?

The course focuses on both spoken and written English and provides a comprehensive description of how the language works and an opportunity to enhance students' communication skills - reading, writing, listening, speaking, grammar and vocabulary, to make them able to communicate confidently and appropriately with people from all walks of life.

The course aims to provide students with the knowledge, understanding and application as follows:

Lifestyle:

• Focus on learning essential language skills of written and spoken English;
• Improve the four language skills - listening, speaking, reading and writing to enable students to access, process and present information in English;
• Provide well-structured speaking tasks for effective and meaningful practice, develop listening and reading skills, and help ameliorate students' writing skills;
• Demonstrate correct usage of the tenses of verbs;
• Gain further grasps of basic study skills; and
• Use various strategies for vocabulary learning.

Personal Behaviour:

• Recognize and use present, past simple & continuous; present and past perfect tenses;
• Learn to use the comparative and superlative degree of adjectives, modals, clauses, active & passive sentences;
• Increase vocabulary through the use of context clues as well as knowledge of word parts;
• Listen and comprehend selected passages or texts;
• Discuss and relate ideas from any sources of information given;
• Write e-mails, curriculum vitaes, learn to book a flight and answer a formal telephone call;
• Observe correct punctuation in all writing tasks; and
• Gain more confidence in expressing ideas and opinions.

Leisure:

• Study at advanced level and be able to use continuous verb forms, perfect verb forms, adjectives and adverbs, passive forms, noun phrases, infinitive and -ing forms;
• Enhance students' spoken and written skills and correct usage and grammatical items in context;
• Identify and perform general types of writing tasks (descriptive, expository, giving details, etc.);
• Write formal letters and design forms, questionnaires to gather information through group work and brainstorming; and
• Read various types of texts and respond to set tasks.

Course Content

Lifestyle:

• People & Places
• You & Yours
• Everyday Life
• Loves and Hates
• Getting from A to B

Personal Behaviour:

• Eating and Drinking
• Extraordinary Lives
• Fact or Fiction
• Buying & Selling
• Street Life

Leisure:

• The World Around Us
• A Weekend Away
• Learning for the Future
• Keeping in Touch
• Going Place

How will I be assessed?

Assignments, assessment tasks