Courses starts: 23 Apr 2026
This course focuses on enhancing listening comprehension and speaking skills, accuracy and fluency to improve your conversational proficiency across various everyday contexts. Through multimedia resources, activities, engaging discussions, and feedback, you'll refine your grammar, expand your vocabulary and gain more confidence in initiating and maintaining a conversation.
Our open-access courses cater for mixed-ability groups, fostering a collaborative environment where students work together to achieve their learning goals. Our experienced tutors create a supportive and dynamic environment, ensuring that the learning experience is both enjoyable and effective.
The weekly course schedule below provides an overview of the main topics likely to be covered in each session. Please note that these may sometimes change at the tutor’s discretion to reflect the interests of course participants.
Week 1: Estou a caminho! Meeting friends (and friends of friends) on the way. Updating news.
Prolonged greetings – informal and formal. Evoking past events.
Week 2: Querem almoçar connosco? Inviting, accepting and refusing social events. Being politely assertive.
Social pleasantries.
Week 3: Desculpe, acho que houve engano!... Rectifying orders at the restaurant. Making polite complaints.
Polite expressions of complaint involving food and restaurants.
Week 4: No consulado. Pedido de vistos e de informação. Mediating at the consulate - requesting visas and cultural information.
On forms and notices; adverts.
Week 5: Precisamos de pôr as vacinas em dia – eu e o meu cão!... Going to the doctor and to the vet.
On human and animal bodies and states.
Week 6: Silêncio que se vai... apresentar! Students’ (voluntary) presentations (1).
Discussing cultural topics relevant to the Portuguese-speaking countries and communities, based on students’ choices.
Week 7: Silêncio, que se vai... apresentar! Students’ (voluntary) presentations (2).
Discussing cultural topics relevant to the Portuguese-speaking countries and communities, based on students’ choices.
Week 8: Revisões. Revision.
Week 9: Estava em aula quando ligaste. Já chegaram? Como correu? Narrating, describing and sharing experiences.
Week 10: Um piquenique de despedida. A farewell picnic. Linguistic and cultural games.
Key grammar points
- 'Há quanto tempo...?' ; 'Desde quando...?' + Preterite Tenses
- Semi-Modal/ising verbs + Infinitive
- Polite expressions of complaint
- 'Estar' + Adjective; 'Estar com' + Noun phrase; 'Ter' + Noun Phrase. Verb 'doer'
- Preterite Tenses (PPS and PII)
Key functions
- Greeting and entertaining - formally and informally
- Inviting, accepting and refusing social events
- Rectifying orders; being politely assertive
- Expressing feelings and states (of people and animals)
- Evoking past events
