INTRODUCTION
Would you like to learn the core language skills of speaking, reading, listening, and writing the English Language? This course focuses on functional language use.
At Kenya Institute of Foreign Languages and Professional Studies (KIFLAPS), you will learn the English Language interactively and dynamically where you will either work alone or in groups and have the chance to put into practice as much English as possible. Our trainers take their studies seriously and work very hard, but you will also have a lot of fun in class.
Content of this course:
The training is aligned with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFRL). In the table below you will find a description of the goals that you should have achieved at the end of the course.
Vocabulary
- Numbers 1-10
- The alphabet
- Simple instructions
- Question words
- Common nouns, verbs and adjectives
- Family members
- Countries and nationalities
- Colours
- Free-time activities
- Telling the time
- Numbers 10-100
- Days and months
- Daily activities
- School subjects
- Time expressions: in the afternoon, …
- Places in a city
- Things you buy and where you buy them
- People and irregular plurals
- Family members
- Describing people: age, appearance and character
- Different verbs used in descriptions
- Parts of the face
- Occupations
- Nationalities
- Opposites: long-short, nice-not nice, …
- Clothes
- Meals, food and drink
- Adjectives describing feelings
- Places
- The weather
- Action verbs
- Collocations: verbs + nouns
- City vocabulary
- Study vocabulary
- Hotel facilities
- Transport
- Travel places and places to meet
- Travel activities
- Entertainment places and vocabulary
- Cinema and theatre verbs
- Activities and events
- Compound nouns
- Telling the time (revision)
- Days, months and years
- Time expressions: special days, holidays and seasons
- Festivals, parties and celebrations
- Food for special occasions
- Basic cooking vocabulary
- Restaurant vocabulary
Grammar
- Syntax: making simple sentences
- Parts of speech: verbs, nouns and adjectives
- Indefinite articles
- Present simple: be and other verbs (affirmative and negative)
- Subject pronouns: I, you, they, and possessive adjectives: my, your
- Question forms, asking for personal information
- Question words: how, what, where
- Subject pronouns and possessive adjectives: I, my, you, your, he, his, …
- Possession: ’s
- Present simple for routines and facts: 3rd person, affirmative and negative
- Prepositions describing where things are
- There is … there are
- Using no and lots of
- Question forms
- Possessive adjectives
- Possession: ’s vs. contracted is
- Question forms
- How is she? vs. What’s she like?
- Pronouns: this, these, it, them
- Past simple: common regular and irregular verbs
- Past of verb to be
- Question forms: present and past
- Present continuous for what is happening now vs. present simple for usually
- -ing forms of verbs
- Suggestions (1): How about …, Let’s …
- Arrangements (present continuous) and scheduled events (present simple)
- Questions with How
- Making suggestions (2): Why don’t we …, We could …
- Review of present simple singular and plural
- Using prepositions: in, on and at
- Countable and uncountable nouns
- Quantifiers: a, an, some, any, lots of
- Using much, many and a lot of
Vocabulary
- Geographical features
- Describing location
- Geographical features
- Civilisation and people
- Countries and nationality adjectives
- Adjectives describing cities
- Daily routine verbs and common collocations
- Jobs and describing what you do
- Adjectives to describe jobs
- Meals
- Animals, birds and plants
- Unusual and endangered animals
- Dimensions and specifications
- Holiday types
- Holiday activities
- Adjectives describing places
- Sports
- Sports equipment
- Sports actions
- Sports results verbs
- Sports people
- Nouns used as adjectives: tennis court,
- Good and bad luck expressions and superstitions
- Phrases with luck and lucky
- Expressions of surprise and disbelief
- Phrases with get
- Things people collect
- Describing interests: fan, be into, …
- Word formation: noun, verb and person
- Adjectives describing feelings
- Action verbs
- Chocolate vocabulary, collocations with chocolate
- Describing processes: verbs and nouns: pack, remove, mix, …
- Recipe vocabulary and food preparation
- Recipe quantities and measurements
- Rural village vocabulary
- Vocabulary of asking for help: lend, help, show, …
- Phrases with give and hand
- Verbs bring, take and hold
Grammar
- Comparative and superlative adjective forms: regular and irregular adjectives
- Present simple question forms
- Question words
- Word order in questions
- Adverbs of frequency
- Using can/can’t for ability
- Questions with How
- Present simple for facts
- Questions and short answers
- Definite articles and zero article
- Present simple vs. continuous
- Present participles
- Question forms
- Expressing opinions: and, but and expect: It was smaller than I expected.
- Make suggestions using Why don’t you
- Past of be: was/were
- Have to, can and can’t for obligation, prohibition and permission
- Past tense of regular and irregular verbs
- Past negation
- So + adjective + that …
- Have got and have
- Review of question forms
- Present perfect for incompletion vs. past simple
- How much/many + present perfect
- Past simple of regular and irregular verbs
- Past simple vs. past continuous
- Subject questions
- Past participles of regular and irregular verbs
- Active vs. passive forms
- Article vs. zero article
- Any, anything, everything, one, a
- Verb patterns: give me the brush (verb + noun + noun)
- Subject and object pronouns
- Can for requests
Vocabulary
- Family words
- Phrases with be and get
- Life events: verbs and nouns
- Speak, talk and say
- Furniture
- Rooms and objects in them
- Adjectives to describe and evaluate interiors
- Clothes
- Adjectives to describe clothes
- Age groups and age expressions with numbers: sixty years old, …
- Verbs: get dressed, put on, wear, carry
- Clothes shopping vocabulary
- Parts of the body
- Health problems and symptoms
- Exercise instructions
- Using adverbs
- Aches and pains
- Lose, waste, spend and pass
- Time-wasting activities
- Waste
- Language of approximation: roughly, precisely, about, …
- Charity vocabulary
- Physical exercise and fitness
- Nouns: walk, hike, trek, trip, journey, tour
- Go +verb -ing
- Geographical features
- Countries, nationalities and languages
- Vocabulary to describe language
- Word types
- Describing change: verbs and adverbs
- Describing fluency
- Moon vocabulary
- Hotel and holiday vocabulary
- Noun suffixes: -ment, -ence and -y
- Expressions with the word moon
- Travel and journeys
- Travel equipment
- Time expressions
- in/at/on + time expressions
- Animals
- Adjectives
- Animal expressions: as free as a bird,
- Reporting verbs
- Punctuation terminology
- Happiness; fun, funny, smile, …
- Health and illness: headache, flu, ill, …
- Keep and stay
- Different meanings of keep
- Job application vocabulary
- Career stages and event
- Work nouns
- Job noun modifiers: laboratory technician, pharmaceutical company, …
- Organisations, departments, people and products
- Home appliances
- Verbs and nouns: appliances and electronic equipment
- Compound nouns: microwave oven, mobile phone, …
- Phrasal verbs: operating equipment: plug in, switch on, …
- Phone vocabulary
- Parts of the face
- Verbs associated with the face
- Words describing things that are true or real, or not: false, artificial, fake, …
- Verb tell: tell if someone is …
- Adjectives describing character
- Cinema vocabulary
- Types of films
- Positive and negative adjectives to express opinions
- Dependent prepositions: set in, directed by, based on, …
- Things that go wrong: miss a bus, have an argument, …
- Bad luck vocabulary
- Home appliances
- Crime vocabulary: burgle, steal, thief,…
- Things that go wrong: Break, stop working, …
- Phrasal verbs with break
- Money and prices
- Shopping vocabulary
- Types of shops
- Things people buy
- Expressions with money
- Borrow vs. lend
- Homemade toys
- Ways of joining things
- Actions and opposites: do up – undo, hold – let go, …
- DIY language
- Vague or generic language: object, stuff, thing, …
- Types of problems
- Negative feelings: miss, regret, jealous, …
- Give + noun
- Matter, problem, trouble, …
- Blame vs. fault
- Real and fictitious animals
- Animal parts
- Suffixes: -like, -sized
- Expressions with sight
- Evidence: track, sign, proof, …
Grammar
- Possessive ‘s
- Tense review – present simple, present continuous and present perfect
- For and since with present perfect
- Questions with how long
- Revision of past participles of irregular verbs
- Prepositions of place
- Give advice: imperatives and will and might to describe possibility
- Tense review: Present simple for habitual behaviour
- Describe habitual actions: prefer, still, always, …
- Describe likes and dislikes using like/want/prefer + object + infinitive + adjective/noun
- Verb + infinitive or -ing form
- Modal verb review: modal verbs and different functions
- Might, could and can for possibility
- Spend/waste time doing
- Present perfect continuous for unfinished actions
- Questions with How long
- It takes me … to do
- Future forms: present simple, will, going to + verb
- Hope vs. expect
- Articles: the vs. no article with geographical words
- Information questions
- Tense review: present simple vs. present continuous
- Say and tell
- Would for hypothesis
- Verb patterns: verbs of planning and organising
- Noun phrase subjects: Tourists with lots of money …
- Past simple vs. past passive forms
- Sentence topic passives: Each time she was discovered …
- Infinitive of purpose
- Past simple vs. past continuous
- Sequencing words: first, after that, finally, …
- Forming adverbs from adjectives
- Punctuation: Using capital letters
- Possessive ’s vs. of constructions
- Can (theoretical statement) vs. could (possibility)
- Verb pattern: noun + of + -ing
- Review question forms
- Review tenses
- Past simple vs. present perfect for finished vs. unfinished actions or situations
- Expressing obligation: have to, need to, should
- Expressing no obligation: don’t have/need to
- Preposition review
- Verbs to describe processes: fall, hold, walk, …
- Separable phrasal verbs
- Verb pattern: Verb + -ing: start training, keep running…
- Verbs associated with the five senses
- Pronouns with indefinite reference
- Use it and this to refer back
- Verb pattern: find it difficult to …
- Make + noun
- Make + object + adjective/verb: make it better, make me stand, …
- Emphasise with even, far, and still
- Contrast with however, but and although
- Link ideas: after all, what’s more, …
- Present perfect for recent events with a result now
- Passive and present perfect passive constructions
- Time expressions: ages ago, recently, lately, …
- Different uses of the -ing form
- Dependent prepositions
- Preposition + -ing form
- Verb + -ing form
- -ing form in compound nouns
- Adjective order
- Verb + adverb: tie together, turn round, fold down, …
- Sequence instructions, Once the shapes are cut, put them …
- Explain how: by + -ing, should + so that
- Explain why: so that
- Give advice: should, ought to, Why not…?, Consider ….
- Conditional sentences: real vs. imaginary situations
- Negation: no, not, never, nothing, …
- Use even to express surprise
- Auxiliary have and different verb forms
- Speculating about past
- Expressing possibility: may/might/could have been
- Verb + -ing
- Verb + noun + -ing: see somebody do/doing something
- Since then + present perfect
Vocabulary
- Newspaper vocabulary
- Name vocabulary: initials, surname, nickname, …
- Words and phrases associated with naming: named, termed, so-called, …
- Notice, realise, be aware of …
- Jobs and related vocabulary
- Career events
- Work and time
- Work and money
- Work, career, job, …
- Vocabulary of sea mammals
- Synonyms
- Verbs about speaking: speak, talk, pronounce, …
- Collocations with make, tell, give and say
- House and building vocabulary
- Building materials and processes
- House metaphors
- Collocations with make, take, do
- Vocabulary of geographical features and for giving directions
- Travel nouns
- Travel verbs
- Prepositions after verbs
- Sports and sports people
- Sporting equipment
- Negative prefixes: in-, un-, dis-, …
- Word families: adjective/verb/noun
- Verbs expressing benefit: gain, improve, enhance, …
- Compound adjectives: long-term, never-ending, …
- Extreme sports
- Physical actions
- Compound words naming activities
- Word building: verb/ adjective/noun
- Phrasal verbs: give up, get away with, give up, …
- Review animal vocabulary
- Australian animals
- Describing shapes: adjectives and nouns and -shaped
- Describing types of lines
- Television programmes
- People who work in television
- Television culture
- Word building: verb/ adjective/noun
- Home appliances
- Environmental problems and solutions
- Compound nouns: eco-friendly, energy-saving, …
- Affixes: under-, over-, re-, pre-, -ful, -less
- Word building: adjectives and verbs, verbs and nouns
- Verbs describing change
- Types of photos
- Phrases describing parts of photos
- Describing distance
- Things people collect
- Collocations and phrasal verbs with take
- Synonyms of lose and find
- Joke types and conventions
- Ways of laughing
- Word families: research-findings, …
- Fun vs. funny
- Word formation: root words
- Verb + at and other prepositions
- Shops and shopping vocabulary
- Words with shop
- Money-related words
- Words ending in -sh
- Phrasal verbs with knock
- Words associated with accidents
- Sports and games
- Sports equipment
- Sports verbs
- Word formation
- Adjectives ending in -ive
- Religion
- Parts of the body
- Animals
- Animal actions
- Noun formation
- Uses of like and as
- Adjective synonyms
- Compound adjectives
- Language terms
- Get + adjectives
- Phrasal verbs with get
- Quantifiers: all, half, most of, …
- During vs. for
- Baby stages
- Baby vocabulary
- Problem behaviour
- Ways of seeing
- Phrasal verb patterns: using pronouns
- Compound adjectives and nouns with numbers: five-year-old boy
- Trees
- Word frequency and academic words
- Word families
- Education systems
- Collocations with education
- Qualifying adverbs
- Compound words with line
- Word formation and repetition
- Dependent prepositions
- Idioms with at
- Vocabulary of machines and gadgets
- Positive and negative words: hazard, oily, ideal, …
- Spelling: -ible and -able
- Word endings: -ify
- Word formation
Grammar
- Verb pattern: verb + noun + noun: name someone something
- Discourse features: ellipsis
- Substitution using one, do/did, so, …
- Position of adverbs
- Irregular past tense review
- Linkers: finally, after that, followed by
- Ability: can, be able to, be capable of, know how to
- Verbs about helping: help, enable, …
- Verb pattern: verb + noun + infinitive with to: help someone to do something
- Non-finite -ing clauses: Having tried …
- Tense review: past, present and future forms
- Future decisions, predictions and plans: will, going to, present continuous and be + infinitive
- Causative have: to have something done
- Verb pattern: verb + wh: She didn’t know where …
- Indirect questions
- Past continuous vs. past simple
- Reporting thoughts
- Expressing cause and result: due to, lead to, result in, …
- Giving reasons: because, because of, since, due to
- Coercion: persuade, make, force, …
- Passive forms
- Express rules and consequences: ban, permit, authorise, …
- Habitual actions: would, used to, keep + -ing, be forever + -ing,
- Be vs. get used to
- Question forms with used to
- Describing representation: X means/ represents/ stands for Y
- Packing information into sentences: pre- and post-modification of noun phrases
- Ways of expressing opinion: I find it …, it looks …, it looks like …, it gives me …, what I like about it is …
- Question forms
- Express obligation, prohibition and permission: have to, (not) allowed/permitted, can’t, mustn’t, can, must
- Express regrets: If only …, I wish …, I shouldn’t have …
- Imperatives vs. -ing forms
- Verb pattern: it surprises/ bothers me to…
- Nominalisation (changing verbs into nouns)
- Review of tenses: present perfect continuous vs. simple
- Past participles as adjectives: a broken chair, …
- Noun + past participles: a photo taken …
- Making deductions: appear, seem, look, apparently, …
- Make + noun + verb
- Uses of the -ing form
- Verb + -ing form
- -ing form as subject
- Post-modifying nouns with -ing
- Preposition review
- Passive forms with get
- Reporting verbs and verb patterns
- Reporting: verbs, nouns and -ing forms: she admitted stealing …
- Modal verb review
- Probability vs. obligation: may, might, could, must
- Obligation: have to, allowed to, supposed to, can
- Adverb formation
- Adverb position
- Second conditional sentences
- Wish + would
- Comparative adverbs and adjectives
- Necessity: need and require
- Verb pattern: want + noun phrase + infinitive
- Modals of probability: could, may, might
- Giving advice: may, might, could, must, should
- Modals + well and just
- In case, if and as long as
- Hypothesis about the past: would + perfect infinitive
- Third conditional forms
- Passive review
- Hypothesising about things that did not happen: I would have phoned, but…
- Deictic expressions: Take that end, and I’ll take this one.
- Modal verbs of necessity and desirability: need to, should, shouldn’t vs. needn’t
- Using more and much
- Nominalisation
- Noun modifiers: distance education, …
- Clause substitution: so and not
- Substitution: do, does, did
- Ellipsis after to and auxiliary verbs
- Noun substitution: one and ones
- Substitution vs. reference
Vocabulary
- Styles and social groups
- Fashions and trends
- Fashion features and clothes
- Describing what’s fashionable and unfashionable
- Phrasal verbs with up
- Travel and holiday vocabulary
- Time expressions and prepositional phrases
- For and during
- Parts of cars
- Driving verbs and vocabulary
- Verbs describing journeys
- Beds and bedroom things
- Sleep and ways of sleeping
- Phrases with sleep
- Sleep idioms
- Words describing purpose: goal, purpose, target, aim, …
- Describing features and appearances
- Adjectives ending in -ed and -ing
- Word formation: adjective suffixes
- Compound adjectives
- Food and nutrition: components and substances: protein, fibre, cholesterol, …
- Phrasal verbs: liven up, slim down, go for, …
- Nouns formed by verb + adverb: takeaway, getaway, make-up, …
- Collocations with nouns formed by verb + adverb
- Ways of eating and drinking
- Ways of serving food
- Computer terms
- Addiction and habits
- Adjective + preposition: addicted to, afraid of, …
- Personality adjectives
- Meanings of get and expressions with get
- Music terms and genres
- Adverbs describing attitude: arguably, supposedly, …
- Compound adjectives
- Music idioms: face the music, …
- Word building
- Using nouns instead of verbs
- Evidence: sign, trace, proof, …
- Ways of saying you don’t know
- Ways of expressing worry
- Vocabulary of anger and arguing
- Arguing expressions and colloquial words
- Language of repetition: forever, time and time again, …
- Heat and cold metaphors
- Fire metaphors
- Word families: cause, hit, estimate, criticise
- Word building: verbs and nouns
- Phrasal verbs with out
Grammar
- Describing characteristic behaviour: tend to, will, like to do, …
- Rephrasing
- Describing trends
- Adjectives and adverbs
- Adverbials describing now
- Uses of had
- Negation
- Verbs followed by past perfect
- Describing frustrated plans: meant to, supposed to, …
- Expressing purpose: so that, in case, in order to, …
- Like vs. as
- Describing appearance: look/sound/taste … as if/like/as though
- Adjective order
- Sub modifiers: by far, a good deal, not nearly, …
- Contrasted comparatives: the more you eat, the more you …
- Inversion after not only
- Negative adverbs: hardly, seldom, scarcely, …
- Verb + -ing: recommend, advise, suggest
- Will for habitual behavior
- Position of adverbs
- Past participles as pre- and postmodification
- Present participles as pre- and postmodification
- Using auxiliary verbs
- Present and past participle clauses
- Yet
- Indefinite pronouns
- Negation: no, not, nor, none
- Non-assertive forms: any
- Non-standard grammar: I ain’t done nothing, …
- Deduction and speculation: must’ve done, could’ve done, …
- Delexical verbs: have, make, give
- Verb pattern: verb + noun + noun: argue with him about the bill, …
- Reciprocal verbs: debated with each other
- Expressing degree of likelihood: modal and lexical
- Nominalisation: nouns used with reported clauses
- That preceding reported clauses
- Contrastive emphasis: If you do go out, …
Vocabulary
- Business and philanthropic people
- Wealth and poverty
- Work vocabulary
- Verb + noun combinations: set up a business, …
- Business idioms
- Word building
- Blog vocabulary
- Word building
- Idioms and colloquial expressions: cost an arm and a leg, dinner to boot, …
- Phrases with every
- Phrases with opinion
- Vocabulary describing marks, art materials and terminology
- Phrasal verb revision
- Adjectives like kitsch, lurid and garish
- Language: idiom, expression, phrase,…
- Ways of speaking: gossip, utter, mumble, …
- Nouns: slang, jargon, colloquialism, …
- Expressions to describe getting on and not getting on
- Expressions to describe imminence: at the brink of, …
- Idioms with tongue
- Planets and space
- Feelings and states of mind
- Cinema vocabulary
- Expressions with time
- Compound adjectives
- Words describing movement
- Friendship and friends
- Nouns describing feelings
- Punctuation and writing terms
- Making friends
- Nouns ending in -ship
- Idioms: take the plunge, by and large,…
- Mouth idioms
- Education systems
- Collocations with education
- Difficult words to spell
- Education vocabulary
- Abbreviations and acronyms: BA, PhD, ADHD, …
- Adjective synonyms
- Verb + out
- Expressions with out
- Animals
- Rubbish and debris
- Hyphenated words: decades-old driftnets, …
- Water idioms
- Nouns describing statements
- Common binomial pairs: pros and cons, sick and tired, …
- Consumerism and downshifting
- Occupations
- Occupation verbs
- Expressions with down
- Compound nouns
- Compound words with self
- Word building
- Words describing what is real and not real
- Obsolete technology
- Describing sounds
- Expressions with sound
- Ways of touching
- Fixed expressions: a whole host of, for all intents and purposes, …
- Stringed instruments
- Whales and whaling
- Marine mammals
- Forms of water
- Water and sea idioms
- Ways of looking
- Boat vocabulary and idioms
- Adrift, afloat, awash, …
Grammar
- Verb pattern: verb + noun phrase + infinitive with to: enable people to fend for themselves
- Participle clauses
- Packing information into sentences
- Different uses of as
- Different uses of like and as
- Using even for emphasis or surprise
- Different ways of introducing opinions
- Modal verb review: ability, obligation, possibility and probability
- Lexical ways of expressing probability: be unlikely, …
- Describing frustrated plans: was hampered by …
- Revision of as
- Uses of to + infinitive
- Verb patterns: decide to travel, can’t bear to think, …
- Infinitives and negation: prefer not toget up, …
- Inverted sentences: Rarely do we see …
- Different uses of such
- So and such
- Adjectives ending in -able and -ible
- Word formation
- Adverb position
- Uses of should and would
- Review of pronouns
- Fronting for emphasis: What stories like this illustrate is …
- Expressing uncertainty with modals of probability
- Review passive forms
- Study uses of past participles
- Describing cause
- Word building
- Review uses of -ing forms: pre and post modification, after it and determiners
- Non-finite clauses: Having decided on…
- Common collocations with -ing forms: burning desire, crying shame, …
- Verbs followed by -ing forms or to + infinitive
- Review be used to and used to + verb
- Substitution with so, do, and as
- Referring back
- Idioms with ear
- Expressions about thinking
- Preposition review
- Dependent prepositions
- Whenever, whoever, however, whatever
- Describing habitual behaviour: keep doing, be forever doing, will, would and used to