Course name: IELTS 5.5                                                                                

Course material: Mindset for IELTS – Book 2

Course length: 12 weeks (4 meetings/ week) = 120 hours

Vietnamese/ Native rate: 36 meetings (108 periods)/ 12 meetings (30 periods)

SUPPLEMENT: 

• For extra Reading materials: Cambridge IELTS series 8, 9 and 10
• For extra Writing tasks: IELTS Graduation

LISTENING

Content focus and objectives:

• continue to refine learners’ knowledge of and skills to address listening sections 1 and 2 of the IELTS test effectively with a strong focus on complex numbers, spelling, and specific information (section 1), completing charts, graphs, following instructions (section 2);
• strongly focus on Section 3 and 4 of the IELTS Listening test, targeting specific skills of recognising paraphrasing, using synonyms, understanding signposting words in academic lectures/ talks, identifying language functions, speakers’ attitudes and opinions, as well as note taking skills;
• provide learners with abundant academic vocabulary with a strong focus on collocations from the listening input.

Expected outcome at exit level: 

Task: Learners are required to complete a full standard IELTS listening test with at least 20 correct answers;

Focused Question types: multiple-choice, short answer questions, sentence completion, summary completion, chart and graphs completion, map completion and matching, and classifying.

SPEAKING

Content focus and objectives:

• develop students’ ability to extend answers with acceptable fluency for Speaking Part 1 and 2 questions;
• familiarise learners with responding to a monologue task (IELTS speaking part 2) focusing on generating and organizing ideas and presenting ideas within the given time limit;
• equip students with sufficient vocabulary for planned speaking tasks in relation to the following topics: hometown, sports, media, travel, job and business, conservation and environment, arts and sciences, education and school, and celebrations
• develop students’ awareness of general criteria and aspects of speaking performance: fluency, accuracy and coherence in speaking and how each language component can contribute to the achievement of these aspects. 

Expected outcome at exit level: At the end of this course, students will be able to

• be able to give extended responses to questions about himself/ herself (part 1 questions);
• be able to perform a monologue speaking task (cue card) within a limited time (2 minutes);
• be able to employ key vocabulary accumulated through the course accurately to perform speaking tasks (parts 1+2+3) with clarity and good control of word stress and sentence stress
• be able to paraphrase at basic level in meaning expression and show a certain extent of flexibility in language using;
• show a good control and accuracy in using simple and compound structures as well as effort to use complex structures but with frequent errors;
• show a pretty good level of control of intonation, sentence stress and chunking

READING

Content focus and objectives:

SKILLS

Learners are expected to achieve 18 - 22 correct answers out of 40 questions. In other words, students can complete 1 - 2 passages successfully within 60 minutes.

At the end of the course, students can perform Scanning skills effectively as the key focus of the current course. Hence, students are able to

• anticipate how the information has been organized: alphabetically, chronologically, numerically
• decide on a few key words or phrases to search, but look for only one key word at a time or multiple keywords, do multiple scans
• once catches the keywords, read the surrounding material carefully
• apply scanning skills to cope with numerous tasks naming True/False/Not Given, Matching Paragraph Information, Summary Completion, Sentence Completion, Multiple Choice Questions, List Selection, Table Completion

Besides, other crucial skills as skimming and essential strategies also need reviewing and developing

VOCABULARY

• expand stock of thematic vocabulary across fundamental topics: Environment, Leisure and Education,News and Media, Travel and Transport, Business and Work, Education System, Festival and Traditions

GRAMMAR FOCUS

• reinforce knowledge of grammar features: tenses, comparison, voice, modals, quantifiers,conditionals,  etc
• improve applicable capability, supporting not only reading modules but also other productive skills

WRITING

After this course, student will be able to:

TASK 1

• analyse a Task 1 question by identifying overall information and key features of a diagram 
• use cohesive devices effectively but cohesion may be faulty at times
• use a wide range of vocabulary for describing data in a diagram but use of some advanced vocabulary may be inaccurate
• use a mix of sentence types (simple, compound, complex), but the focus is on complex structures
• write complete descriptive reports (150 words) on a diagram, especially on multiple diagrams (e.g. a line graph and a pie chart)

TASK 2

• approach a Task 2 essay question and address all parts of the task although some parts may be more fully covered than others
• present a relevant standpoint and main ideas in discussion essays but some might be unclear
• use cohesive devices, referencing, and paragraphing effectively to ensure coherence
• use an adequate range of vocabulary and uncommon words but with some inaccuracy 
• use a diversity of sentence structures (simple, compound, complex), but the focus is on complex structures 
• write complete essays (250 words) discussing advantages/disadvantages and problems/solutions, and especially expressing their opinions about an issue