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Course description: Upper Intermediate is for those who have successfully completed the Lower Intermediate Albanian Short Course or a similar course and/or have developed a sound knowledge of the basics of the language through extensive visits to Albania or through self-study. The course runs over three ten-week terms and each session is two hours long. Linguistic and cultural awareness is reinforced through continuous revision and by building on students’ previous knowledge when introducing a new topic. On completion of the course students should be able to get by in most Albanian-speaking environments, and to retrieve information from authentic materials. The course includes all four skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. The course will cover the following:
Topics:
- regions of Albania and Kosovo; travelling
- idioms and proverbs,
- health and illness, at the doctor’s, body parts revisited
- furnishing a house
- getting by at the airport and calling a taxi
- opening a bank account, paying one’s bills and charges
- making arrangements, enrolling and attending events
- setting up a mobile phone or internet contract
- what can go wrong: making complaints while travelling or at home
- discussing goals, purpose, and conditions; things that have gone wrong in the past
- a few essential texts in Albanian literature
Functions:
- agreeing/disagreeing, expressing opinion
- relating past events
- expressing wishes, desires, and possibilities
- negotiating and discussing conditions
- making suggestions and recommendations
- speculating, making assumptions
- complaining and apologising; excuses
- giving orders and making polite requests: understanding the difference
- comparing and contrasting
Grammar:
- revision and more in depth study of the grammar covered at previous levels
- past perfect progressive, future progressive, future perfect progressive
- complex sentences: relative clauses and complement closes
- compound nouns, articled nouns
- emphatic pronouns
- conditional, past conditional
- verbal phrases, gerund
- difficult adverbs, subordinating conjunctions, interjections
Learning resources:
- Albanian Verbs by Bahtjar Bega: IBSN 978 99943 40 43 9
- teacher’s materials