General English Courses General English Courses concentrate on the development of all your communicative skills (speaking, writing, reading and listening) whilst teaching grammatical and functional language in realistic and meaningful contexts. The emphasis is on practice, building your confidence and your accuracy hand in hand. General English courses are offered at seven levels of proficiency, ranging from Beginner to Upper Advanced, each with its own textbook. Each level is divided into two courses, A and B. New students are placed in the level best suited to their needs by means of an initial placement test. With a choice of two different types of General English courses, you can study at a speed that suits you best. We offer Standard and Fast Track timetables. You can decide the rate of progress that is best for you, depending on your aims and the investment of time, effort and money you wish to make. And later, if you feel a change of timetable would be better for you, you always have the flexibility to change. Standard Timetable This option is popular with people who prefer to go at a moderate pace, allowing themselves sufficient time to absorb and practise what they are studying. Standard courses, which have classes of two hours two days per week or one class of four hours on Saturday, last 16 weeks, or two bimestres, so a Level (part A + part B) is completed in four bimestres. You can choose a Monday/Wednesday or a Tuesday/Thursday timetable, morning or evening, or Saturday morning or afternoon. See Schedules and Prices for details. Fast Track Timetable Whilst the Fast Track course is a faster option, this solution is better suited for people with more time available to do the volume of home study necessary to succeed in this more condensed version. Fast Track courses cover the same material as Standard courses in 8 weeks and have classes of three hours twice a week. One level is completed in two bimestres for levels 1 to 4 and three bimestres for levels 5 to 7. You can choose a Monday/Wednesday or a Tuesday/Thursday timetable, morning or evening. See Schedules and Prices for details. Placement All new students are allocated to the best level for their abilities by means of a written and oral Placement Test, which has to be taken at Instituto Britanico. Conversation Clubs On Friday evenings we offer our students opportunities to practise their English in our new Conversation Clubs. Participation in these is free to registered students and attendance is optional. Various themes relevant to young adult Costa Ricans are explored as a basis for practising the spoken language and, through a series of workshops, language-related topics focus attention on specific aspects of English. Social activities are also planned on an occasional basis to give our students the chance share aspects of the culture in an informal and communicative setting. International Qualifications For further recognition of their abilities, many people opt for the international qualifications that Instituto Britanico is authorised to offer. See International Examinations on the Home Page. Evaluation Throughout the course students are assessed on their Communication Skills (reading, writing, speaking and listening) and at the end of each part of a level there is an examination (A courses have an oral exam and B courses a written exam). Homework is an important part of the mix, further consolidating what was taught in class, and should be taken seriously. We believe that writing exercises are important but not a productive or communicative use of class time, so these too are an essential element of homework and count towards your grades. At Instituto Britanico it is assumed that adult students are mature, motivated and responsible - those who are not will find their progress suffering - so no free points are awarded for attendance, participation or simply doing homework right or wrong. Courses books The Instituto uses a variety of coursebooks from leading British publishers, like Longman and Oxford University Press, and has an exclusively agreement for a number of these coursebooks. Homework is an important part of the mix, further consolidating what was taught in class, and should be taken seriously. We believe that writing exercises are important but not a productive or communicative use of class time, so these too are an essential element of homework and count towards your grades.

 

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