Spanish 90 Upper Intermediate (B2.1)

LEVEL B2.1

INTRODUCTION

On completing this course, students should be able to:
     - Understand without any difficulty any conversation between native speakers on nonspecialist themes, in standard register.
     - Follow an oral presentation in an academic environment on subject included in their studies (lectures, conferences, presentation and contributions by colleagues in the classroom), write and summarise information from notes taken during the class.
     - Understand the overall meaning and extract specific information for different types of oral and written texts.
     - Recognise the basic differences in formal and colloquial registers.
     - Recognise attitudes and moods in a speaker from intonation, gestures, rhythm, etc.
     - Understand genuine literary texts by contemporary authors, both Spanish ad Latin American, with some lack of vocabulary.
     - Extract the main information from texts related to their professional, studies or any other kind of informative document.
     - Take part in conversations, discussions, debates, etc. on general subject matters, adjusting the discourse to the required register, formal or informal, with an appropriate control of the Spanish language and recognising idiomatic expressions appropriate to the level.
     - Speak about a subject with clarity and coherence for a brief period of time, suing the appropriate resources for discourse.
     - Write with correct spelling and talk with clarity and coherence about facts (past, present and future) related to their own situation.
     - Write texts (personal letters, formal letters, etc), adapting the model and using the appropriate register, vocabulary and style for each type of text.
     - Write a report or essay about a specific subject related to their professional field or studies using appropriate vocabulary, register and style.
     - Reproduce orally and in writing information, opinions and stories from other people.
     - Use monolingual dictionaries and other necessary reference works to work independently in the process of learning.

LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS

Social function
— Express gratitude.
— Show an interest in someone.
— Encourage and calm someone down.
— Apologise.
— Offer congratulations.

Informative function
— Transmit information, orders and instructions from one person to another.
— Narrate any fact or event or information transmitted by other people stating the time references (previous, simultaneousness, immediacy, etc.).
— Formulate hypotheses referring to the present, the past and the future.
— Describe people, things or processes with a degree of precision and appropriate shades of meaning (changes that have occurred to people and things).

Expressive function
— Express different moods: happiness, sadness, resignation, satisfaction, anger, hope, etc.
— Reproach, complain.
— Show interest or rejection.
— Show tastes and sensations.
— Express desires.

Evaluative function
— Asking for and giving opinions: show agreement or disagreement with the opinions of others.
— Judge and value people and periods (refute valuations).
— Express conditions and request special conditions.

Inductive function
— Arguing to convince, persuade or induce someone to do something.
— Demanding, insisting on the fulfilment of something.
— Threatening.

Meta-linguistic function
— Organising a discourse: starting with a topic, enumerating, arguing a case, summarising, indicating the conclusion.
— Alluding to a subject.
— Asking for and giving explanations about points of grammar.

GRAMMATICAL CONTENT

Determinants
— Structures with the neuter article lo (lo que yo digo…).

Nouns and adjectives
— Using adjectives as nouns with the neutral article lo (lo curioso, lo malo...).

Verbs
— Contrast between all indicative past tenses.
— Present subjunctive.
— Simple past and imperfect subjunctive.
— Past perfect subjunctive.
— Simple and composite conditional tense
— Verbal agreement in the expression of an impossible condition (―Si lo hubiera sabido…‖) using the particle si.
— Future perfect.
— Use of verbs ―ser‖ and ―estar‖ to express different meanings: ser listo / estar listo.
— Pronominal verbs.
— Gerund: expressing a condition.
— Verbs of change: convertirse en/a , llegar a ser, etc.
— Prepositional verbs: preocuparse por, acordarse de...
— Phrasal verbs:
     · estar a punto de + infinitive (―Está a punto de llegar‖)
     · seguir + gerund (―Sigue fumando‖)
     · llevar + gerund‖ (―Llevo diez horas trabajando‖)
     · llevar + participle (―Llevaban casados tres años cuando…‖)
— Introduction to the passive voice.

Adverbs
— Adverbial conditional expressions: como, siempre que, siempre y cuando, depende de...
— Adverbial time expressions: así que, en cuanto, antes de que, hasta que, mientras, mientras tanto, de repente...
— Adverbs ending in –mente: efectivamente.

Pronouns
— Neuter pronouns: esto, eso, aquello, lo (―Eso no lo discute nadie‖).

Prepositions
— Extension of the use of prepositions and prepositional sayings (por tanto, por si acaso, por cierto…).

Conjunctions
— Extension of conjunctional expression of subordination.

Spelling
— Extension.