General Activity/Theme
Meeting and getting to know people and maintaining social relations
Performance Targets
- Apologising
- Asking after someone
- Asking for information
- Asking for someone over the phone
- Congratulating someone
- Describing one's likes and dislikes, interests and hobbies
- Giving and seeking personal details, e.g. name, address, nationality, telephone number, occupation
- Greeting someone and bidding them farewell
- Introducing a third party
- Leaving a message for someone (phone call and text)
- Making excuses
- Making small talk
- Meeting someone (initiation and response)
- Thanking
- Wishing someone well
Linguistic Skills
- Developing an awareness of appropriateness of register
- Developing an awareness of punctuation conventions
- Developing correct usage of question forms and appropriate replies.
- Developing correct use of politeness formulae
- Developing an awareness of the verbal system
- Developing an awareness of the case system
- Coping with numbers
Structures and Grammar
Use of
Formal and informal modes of address
Forms of address (face to face, in letters)
Forms of greeting
Taking leave (face to face, in letters)
Use of exclamation mark in greetings
Use of intonation
Use of interrogative forms
Present and past tense
numerals
General Activity/Theme
Discussing family and home
Performance Targets
- Describing one's family and friends
- Describing one's family history
- Describing one's home
- Enquiring about and describing family gatherings
- Enquiring about someone else's family and friends
- Enquiring about someone else's home
Linguistic Skills
- Expressing possession
- Coping with numbers
- Expressing negation
- Expressing age
- Expressing dates
- Expressing time
- Expressing habitual/customary behaviour/routine
- Expressing location
- Decoding abbreviated forms of language, e.g. in advertisements
- Familiarity with names of public holidays
- Familiarity with names of rooms, furniture and furnishings
- Familiarity with names of common dishes (in particular those associated with special events/festivities)
Structures and Grammar
Imperfective aspect
General Activity/Theme
Asking about and describing the general nature of the region or locality in which someone lives
- Enquiring about and describing a region or locality (its defining characteristics, its situation relative to other places, the ethnic origins of its population, public amenities and public transport)
- Enquiring about and describing the general weather pattern in a particular country, region, or locality
- Enquiring about whether particular activities (e.g. skiing, skating, sailing, swimming, canoeing, hiking) are going to be possible undercertain weather conditions
Linguistic Skills
- Mastery of a broad range of vocabulary relating geographical terms
- Weather expressions
- Use of short form neuter predicates:
- Nationalities
- Public amenities
- Public transport facilities
- Customs and Practices
- Expressing desire
- Expressing reason
- Degrees of comparison
Structures and Grammar
(see: Coping with travel and transport)
(see: Discussing family and home)
Comparative and superlative
General Activity/Theme
Talking about learning
- Communicating in the classroom
- asking for help
- asking for explanations
- asking for information
- asking how to say something in Russian
- asking what something means in English/Irish
- asking someone to repeat or rephrase something
- asking for someone to say something more slowly
- saying that you do not understand something
- asking for something (e.g. a dictionary, text-book, pencil,...)
- suggesting things to do -> responding to a suggestion
- saying who is absent and why
- apologising for and explaining lateness or unacceptable behaviour
- organising group/pair work
- beginning, ending and changing an activity
General Activity/Theme
Enquiring about and describing work
Linguistic Skills
- Mastery of a broad range of vocabulary relating to education (names of subjects, educational establishments, structures in a school/university, extra-curricular activities...)
- classroom (furniture, equipment...)
- school building and facilities
- verbs associated with the educational process
- Expressing likes/dislikes/preference
- Classroom discourse
- Expressing understanding
- Asking someone to do something
- Expressing desire/purpose
- Expressing the time
General Activity/Theme
Enquiring about and discussing leisure pursuits
Performance Targets
- Asking and stating what someone does
- Asking and stating where someone works
- Asking and stating where someone would like to work
Linguistic Skills
- Expressing occupation
- Expressing place
- Familiarity with verbs describing types of work
- Expressing desire/purpose
General Activity/Theme
Making plans and discussing future action
Linguistic Skills
- Familiarity with the concept of future
- Expressing and enquiring about intention
- Expressing cause and reason
- Expressing purpose
- Mastery of broad range of vocabulary relating to
- holiday resorts
- leisure pursuits (see Enquiring about and discussing leisure pursuits)
- career/study plans (see Talking about learning and enquiring about and discussing work)
Structures and Grammar
Future tense
Use of present to indicate future
Adverbs which imply future
__________ + infinitive
Subordinate clause with:
Subordinate clause with:
General Activity/Theme
Talking about events in people's lives
Performance Targets
- Asking and saying what happened when, where and why
- Reporting what someone did or did not do with whom, when, where, why (cause) and with what intent (purpose)
- Reporting what someone does or does not do with whom, when, where, why (cause) and with what intent (purpose)
- Reporting what someone will or will not do with whom, when, where, why (cause) and with what
- intent (purpose)
- Reporting what someone would or would not do with whom, when, where, why (cause) and with what intent (purpose), if....
Linguistic Skills
Developing and awareness of the verbal system
Expressing temporal relations
Expressing causal relations
Structures and Grammar
Use of tense, aspect and mood (conditional)
Use of prepositions, adverbs, conjunctions to
express temporal sequencing:
Use of prepositions, adverbs, conjunctions to
express causal relations
General Activity/Theme
Coping with travel and transport
Performance Targets
- Asking for directions, optimal routes
- Discussing and making decisions about itinerary details
- Discussing holiday hopes, preferences and possibilities
- Enquiring about dates/times of opening/closing, departure/arrival
- Enquiring about facilities (washroom amenities, refreshments)
- Enquiring and telling about tourist facilities (castles, sites, museums, exhibitions, excursions)
- Explaining and enquiring about week-end/holiday plans
- Giving directions
- Reserving and claiming seats or compartments on trains, buses and planes
- Specifying type and number of tickets e.g. class, single/return
Linguistic Skills
- Understanding information/relaying concise information
- Expressing direction
- Giving instructions/directions
- Expressing time
- Expressing preference
- Expressing desire
- Understanding the verbal system
Structures and Grammar
Use of interrogatives
Use of reflexive verbs:
Use of imperative,
Use of prefixed verbs of motion
Use of 24-hour clock
Use of comparative and superlative, e.g.+ infinitive
Use of the present tense with future reference:
General Activity/Theme
Buying goods and services
Performance Targets
- Asking about prices and change
- Asking for items in a shop, post office...
- Changing money or cheques in banks and change offices
- Finding out about days/times of opening/closing
- Identifying the particular item you want: quantity, size, colour, price
- Locating different sections/counters of a shop, post office...
- Using the media, telephone services and other sources to find out where particular goods and services are available
Linguistic Skills
- Coping with numbers
- Enquiring, negotiating, choosing
- Decoding abbreviated forms of language, e.g. in advertisements, small ads
Structures and Grammar
Details of size, cost, quantity, weight
Interrogative forms; expressions of preference
General Activity/Theme
Facilitating, encouraging or impeding a course of action
Performance Targets
- Requesting permission to do something
- Making suggestions
- Offering advice
- Making demands
- Ordering or forbidding someone to do something
Linguistic Skills
- Mastery of structures necessary to facilitate a course of action
Structures and Grammar
Modal adverbs:
Dative constructions:
General Activity/Theme
Understanding, expressing feelings and attitudes
Performance Targets
- Expressing a liking, dislike and preference
- Expressing belief
- Expressing certainty
- Expressing disappointment
- Expressing disbelief
- Expressing hope
- Expressing horror and embarrassment
- Expressing pleasure
- Expressing satisfaction, dissatisfaction and indifference
- Expressing surprise and regret
- Expressing uncertainty
Linguistic Skills
- Developing the ability to react appropriately in a variety of situations
General Activity/Theme
Managing a conversation
Performance Targets
- Asking for repetition and/or clarification
- Confirming that something has been understood
- Ending a conversation
- Expressing incomprehension
- Starting a conversation
Linguistic Skills
- Developing sensitivity to use of register
- Developing awareness of appropriateness of formulas to initiate and end conversations
- Developing use of question forms
Structures and Grammar
Appropriate use of formal and informal personal pronouns and verb forms
General Activity/Theme
Engaging in discussion
Performance Targets
- Concluding a discussion
- Expressing something as an opinion
- Ordering points in a discussion
- Stating that something is true or untrue
Linguistic Skills
- Expressing and enquiring about opinion
- Expressing certainty/uncertainty
- Expressing an opinion
- Expressing and enquiring about agreement/disagreement
- Using clauses of contrast
- Giving an example
- Using appropriate parenthetic words
General Activity/Theme
Passing on messages
Performance Targets
- Offering to take a message
- Giving someone a message
- Indicating from whom a message originated
- Dealing with messages on an answering machine
Linguistic Skills
- Relaying content of message
- Transforming language forms in expanding messages
Structures and Grammar
Use of direct/indirect speech
Manipulating linguistic forms