Englisch
Kontakt zum Fachschaftspräsident Englisch:
Frau Jennifer Whitebread: jennifer.whitebread_(4TW_NO_SPAM)_edubs.ch
The English Department aims to develop each student’s capacity for intelligent, articulate perception through a participation in the full potential of the English language.
The Department’s objectives are therefore:
In speaking and writing:
• to guide and develop knowledge and skills in the use of English, enabling students to think clearly and express thoughts, feelings and experience accurately and appropriately. All of our teaching staff are perfectly comfortable with both British and American English standards. Cultural variety is something we like to encourage in our school.
In reading:
• to teach the art and encourage the passion of reading well and deeply.
In literature:
• to introduce the most significant literature in English, because in dialogue with great writing of both past and present students learn about themselves and their world.
In the awareness of language:
• to foster delight in the variety and energy of language well used, and so enrich discrimination as well as understanding.
During the first two years, our students are expected to acquire a good basic knowledge of English. The coursebook New English File is used to develop the skills of reading, writing,
listening and speaking.
Years three to five focus mainly on the acquisition of language through literature. Some people may object that reading English literature could be a waste of time - or even an annoying obstacle - for someone who is not interested in studying English later on at university. This objection may seem reasonable at first glance, but it rests on a shaky assumption. Success in a career does not depend merely on learning the specialized information and skills required to join a profession. In most careers people often fail not because they don’t understand their jobs, but because they don’t understand their co-workers, their clients, or their customers. They don’t ever see the world from another person’s point of view. Their problem is a failure of imagination. To leap over the wall of self, to look through another’s eyes - this is valuable experience which literature offers. The United States supreme court justice, John Paul Stevens, once remarked that the best preparation for law school is to study poetry. Why? Because “no other discipline so closely resembles the central question asked in the study of legal thinking: Here is a text; in how many ways can it have meaning?”
Programme:
A student taking English as a subject for the Matura has three hours of English per week with an obligatory supplement of two hours per week during the first year.
We also offer four facultative courses at different levels. These normally take place during the midday break to allow students from different classes to attend.
Our programme also includes a preparatory course of two hours per week for either the Cambridge Certificates or the TOEFL diploma. Our students usually train for the Cambridge First Certificate before deciding to prepare for either the Cambridge Advanced Certificate or the TOEFL.
These certificates are required for entry to any English speaking univeresity and are also demanded by some Swiss and European institutions of higher education.
GM VOICES
