Kompetenzerweiterung II, Both Groups, Work for Week One

Welcome to the course!

Even though we won't be meeting in person today, I'm still excited about the new semester and hope you are as well. In these days, as always, I hope you will be kind to yourself and to those around you. I personally have found meditation, yoga, and eating well to work wonders in terms of my general mood and as a way to prevent feeling confined in my apartment. I hope these times can have the positive effect of you getting to know yourself a bit better.

My priority for these weeks is that you do as much as possible to prepare well for the exam. There will be no online lectures; everything you need to accomplish this will be provided in weekly posts (on Mondays) here on the blog. As we did last semester, I want our first month to focus on the (new) grammar points relevant for the exam so that we have plenty of time to review in June. Therefore, these first three weeks will focus on the following units of the book (if you do not have the book already, please order Destination C1/C2 with Student Answer Key immediately, ISBN 978-3190629558):

Week One (March 23-27): Units 9-10 + Review Units 9-10
Week Two (March 30- April 3): Units 11-12 + Review Units 11-12
Week Three (April 6-10): Units 25-26 + Review Units 25-26

Using this schedule as a guide, you should complete all of the exercises each week for each of the two units and the review pages. This includes thoroughly reading the grammar pages in the odd units, and learning ALL of the vocabulary in the even units. In addition to this, I will be providing external resources (videos and extra exercises) in each week's post and providing you the opportunity to submit written work each week. These essays MUST be submitted by the deadline provided; I'm afraid that these conditions allow for no exceptions.

I invite you to submit any questions you have to me via email; I will collect these questions and post answers to them each Monday on the blog (generally not individually via email) so that everyone can profit from them.

The following is your work for week one (March 23-27):

Complete all of the exercises for Units 9-10 and the exercises on the review pages for the Units 9-10. I also recommend completing the following online exercises on modals:
https://www.eltbase.com/quiz/200_01.htm
https://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/courses/elc/studyzone/410/grammar/410-modals-of-possibility-and-probability-for-past-situations1.htm
https://www.really-learn-english.com/english-modal-verbs-exercise-01.html
https://sites.uclouvain.be/gramlink/Gramlink-AN/exercices/auxmod/auxmod08.htm
https://www.esl-lounge.com/student/grammar/4g3-modals-deduction-exercise.php
https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/grammar/intermediate-to-upper-intermediate/modals-deductions-about-the-past
https://www.perfect-english-grammar.com/could-have-should-have-would-have-exercise-1.html
https://www.ldoceonline.com/exercise/section-advanced-grammar/ (Here, click on "modal verbs" to get a complete drop-down of quizzes and explanations)

This video provides a complete overview of modals (including the basics): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GMU08J98MQ

For your writing assignment, please visit the following page and scroll down until you see "discussion topics" on the right-hand margin: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate Click on one of these topics and select one of the questions. Read all of the responses to the question and then write your answer, pretending that your essay would be published among the other contributions (this means no repeating someone else's essay or thesis one-to-one). Submit your essay of 250-300 words to me at my email address in MS Word by Wednesday, March 25th at midnight. Essays submitted after this deadline will be deleted (I'm sorry, but I have to be strict to keep on top of the work coming in).