Development of Linguistic Skills

Receptive skills

• Students will understand and evaluate a wide range of works, attending to textual detail, applying knowledge of textual conventions and making informed interpretations, analyses, comparisons and evaluations. They will consider arguments, distinguishing the main points from relevant supporting details and explanations. They will use a variety of strategies to deduce meaning and move beyond the literal level to broader implications.

Productive skills

• Students will present and develop their ideas and opinions on a variety of topics, orally and in writing. They will construct and support complex arguments with explanations and examples. They will experiment with form by carrying out, as part of their class activities, transformative and re-creative activities either in writing or as performance. They will speak and write at length and with purpose in order to meet a wide range of communicative needs: describing, narrating, comparing, explaining, persuading and evaluating.

Interactive skills

• Students will begin, maintain and close oral exchanges, displaying the ability to adjust style or emphasis; using a variety of strategies to maintain the flow of discussions; attending to diverse perspectives and opinions. They will take into account audience and purpose employing appropriate language, tone of voice, body language and gesture. They will also be able to interact with texts and maintain written conversation in various registers and on various platforms.