About the Course
Intermediate English corresponds to the B1 level on the CEFR scale. At this stage, you transition from managing basic daily needs to becoming an independent user of the language. You can easily navigate most everyday situations and express your personal thoughts, plans, and opinions.
What You Can Do at the B1 Level
Independence: Handle most situations likely to arise while traveling in an English-speaking area.
Expression: Connect phrases in a coherent way to describe experiences, events, dreams, hopes, and ambitions.
Arguments: Briefly give reasons and explanations for your opinions, choices, and plans.
Understanding: Grasp the main points of clear standard input on familiar matters regularly encountered in work, school, and leisure.
Core Skills Breakdown
Skill | Intermediate (B1) Expectations | Common Practice Topics |
Grammar | Moving beyond simple structures into complex timelines, expressing hypothetical situations, and reporting speech. | Present Perfect Simple vs. Continuous, Past Continuous, 1st and 2nd Conditionals, Passive Voice, Reported Speech. |
Vocabulary | Active vocabulary expands to 2,000 to 3,000 words. Understanding abstract concepts and professional terms. | Words like consequence, alternative, approach, flexible, summarize, permanent. |
Reading | Understanding texts that consist mainly of high-frequency everyday or job-related language. | News articles, workplace emails, short stories, brochure descriptions. |
Speaking | Entering unprepared into conversations on familiar topics and connecting phrases to tell a story or plot. | Agreeing and disagreeing politely, checking information, summarizing a movie plot, discussing future plans. |
How to Advance to Upper-Intermediate (B2)
Master the Nuances of Complex Grammar: Move beyond just using the passive voice or basic conditionals. Practice the Third Conditional, Mixed Conditionals, and advanced modal verbs (e.g., should have done, must have been).
Consume Native Media: Stop using subtitled media meant for learners. Watch mainstream movies, listen to standard news broadcasts (like BBC or NPR), and read full-length novels or long-form essays to build contextual understanding.
Idioms and Collocations: Build fluency by using natural idioms (e.g., take something for granted, read between the lines) and strong word pairings (deeply regret, strictly forbidden).
Your Instructor
Gregg Greening
Hello and nice to meet you. My name is Gregg, I'm from Paradise California, and a former President and Managing Director of Vocational Training and English Conversation schools in both Japan and China with over 25 years experience in the fields of Conversational English, Business English, TOEIC and IELTS preparation instruction and more to corporate clients, university undergraduates and students of all ages and abilities. I have established and developed 3 schools in both Japan and China since 1982 and have recently completed a 3 year term teaching technical English courses at Fuzhou University, Fujian, China, covering English Linguistics, Oral English Presentations, Academic Writing and Technical Engineering English Vocabulary.