Course description

Course aims:

• to make studying English grammar challenging and enjoyable.
• to improve your knowledge of English grammar and your ability to use it with confidence.

How these aims are achieved:

• by making the lessons highly interactive and practical
• by answering any question you may have about English grammar structures
• by studying and practising grammar structures in different contexts (writing and speech)
• by analysing grammar structures using engaging audio and video recordings.

Language areas covered on the course include:

• problematic tenses
• relative clauses
• passives, reporting with passives, have something done
• conditionals, unreal past, preferences
• used to do versus be used to doing
• modal constructions incl. passives (e.g. can't have been written)
• countable and uncountable nouns
• linking words.

By the end of the course you should be able to:

• use English grammar more confidently
• understand the form, meaning and use of a variety of grammar structures
• reflect upon your awareness of language.

Course material

• Murphy, R., English Grammar in Use (Fourth Edition), Cambridge. ISBN 9780521189392.

The course material is not included in the registration fee. Course participants are required to purchase course materials themselves.

Target group and admission requirements

This course is intended for highly educated adults, both students and staff members of Leiden University, as well as interested parties with no affiliation with Leiden University.

This course is intended for participants who have already obtained level B2 of the CEF. You are strongly advised  to take a placement test in order to find out which level suits your current knowledge of the English language. You can simply complete the online placement test at home. When you are in doubt, contact us: 071 - 5272332 / talencentrum@hum.leidenuniv.nl

If you wish, you may also take the test at the reception desk of the Academic Language Centre on working days between 9:00 and 15:30 o'clock. It is not necessary to make an appointment.

Other information

• The maximum number of participants for this course is 16.
• The holiday periods can be found in the Academic Language Centre's academic calendar.
• If classes are cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances, they will be added at the end of the courses. Please take into account that courses may end later than scheduled.
• The course level is indicated with the help of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.