Dutch : Language Skills and Fluency

At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to :

Acquire an upper intermediate level of communicative competence in the following skills: listening, speaking (with or without interaction), reading and writing. Expand the basic vocabulary, for both receptive and productive language skills.
After completing the course the student will be able to:

• understand and take part in an unplanned conversation (e.g. with a native speaker) about an everyday topic or a topic dealt with in the media
• take part in a discussion about a topic with which s/he is familiar: understand the arguments put forward, be able to summarize them and express a personal opinion
• follow with ease factual information presented e.g. on the radio or on television; be able to summarize and/or make a presentation on it.
• accurately understand complex authentic written texts (specific and abstract topics)
• identify and explain the technical and rhetorical means used by the writers (at the lexical, grammatical, phraseological, stylistic and pragmatic level)
• summarize, comment and present the information contained in the documents seen in class;
• produce clear and structured written documents of a relatively personal or argumentative character (e-mails, notes, opinion articles, etc.). Particular attention will be given to developing arguments and to critical personal reasoning.