Courses for adults

A communicative-pragmatic approach for tailor-made language training

It is not easy to define and explain the concept of “method”, nor it seems possible to indicate general learning theories and fix techniques to explain what, in teaching practice, the mother tongue teacher does to adapt to the different reference contexts and to the training needs of the students.

It is therefore correct to think that our teachers follow different “methodological orientations” that determine their operational choices and the achievement of the set objectives. The teaching we offer is essentially of a pragmatic-communicative approach, that is aimed at achieving certain goals based on the need to bring authentic communicative situations to life.

Pragmatics is in fact the study of language in relation to the use made of it by the speaker, taking into particular consideration the situations and purposes of communication. The teacher who follows the pragmatic-communicative approach focuses on the practical, concrete meaning of communication, that is the effect that the speaker intends to achieve with his or her speech acts. The primary objective of teaching a foreign language is no longer the mastery of a formally correct language, but communicative competence, in order to be able to communicate appropriately in certain situations.

The individual and direct involvement of the student in the class allows them to exploit their strengths to better develop their language skills. The atmosphere in the classroom is therefore fundamental, which is relaxed, familiar and rewarding. All our language projects intend to give particular feedback to the directives of the European Union and the Council of Europe. They respond to the need to accurately trace the student’s learning profile in terms of incoming personal skills, definition of objectives and purposes of use, timely verification of partial and end-of-course results. The importance of learning modern languages ​​beyond one’s own has several purposes:

• broad intellectual training in general
• increase in self-esteem and self-worth
• effective consolidation of good relations between peoples

It is therefore characteristic of the Language Point teacher to pay attention to the orientation dimension and to the “ad personam“ language training.”.

The Language Point teacher is used to planning the didactic intervention through a plan that facilitates learning and adapts to the differences in skills and interests of his students.

The organization of the syllabus is not structural but essentially communicative. The communicative needs of the students constitute the criterion for selecting and organizing the linguistic content.

From the learning and use of the communicative functions, we proceed to the identification of the grammatical structures and the learning of the rules. In order to satisfy their communication needs, students will be able to communicate not only verbally but also in writing, proceeding in compliance with the progression: listening-speaking-reading-writing. Normally articulated on 6 levels (13 sub-levels) of general linguistic competence and in line with the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), our plan for European languages ​​ is structured as per the table above.

Different times are required to pass from one level to another. The number of hours of study may therefore vary, also due to the different type of course. For example, if in many cases 60 to 90 hours may be enough to pass from level A2 to level B1, for other courses the level passage requires the attendance of two successive courses of 90 hours each.