C2 Syllabus

Syllabus Level

Upon completion of Level C2 students can understand with ease virtually everything heard or read and express themselves spontaneously, very fluently and precisely, differentiating finer shades of meaning even in more complex situations. Can interact effortlessly, picking up and using non-verbal and intonational cues without effort, and interweaving their contribution into the joint discourse in fully natural fashion. Can produce written work that shows good organizational structure, with an understanding of the style and content appropriate to the task, proof-read and lay out in accordance with relevant conventions.

Comprehension: Listening and Reading

Students at this level can do the following:

Understand any kind of spoken language, whether live or broadcast, delivered at a fast speed, even in a noisy environment.
Fully appreciate films, plays, TV, and the radio, including humor, nuance, and implied meaning.
Follow debates, discussions, specialized lectures, and presentations that contain a high degree of colloquial expressions, regional usage, or unfamiliar terminology.
Understand any interlocutor, given an opportunity to adjust to a non-standard accent or dialect, fully appreciating the sociocultural implications of language used by other speakers and reacting accordingly.
Understand irony and sarcasm and draw appropriate conclusions about their use.
Read any kind of text, from complex reports, manuals and contracts, to classical as well as contemporary literary texts in different genres, including those written in a very colloquial style and containing many idiomatic expressions or slang.

Production: Speaking

Students can easily do the following:

Have an extended debate, even when this is highly idiomatic, and contribute to formal discussion of complex issues articulately and persuasively.
When arguing for or against a case, they can convey finer shades of meaning precisely in order to give emphasis, differentiate, and eliminate ambiguity; can employ irony and understatement in an appropriate manner.
Reformulate ideas in differing ways to give emphasis, to differentiate and to eliminate ambiguity, if necessary, backtracking and restructuring around a difficulty so smoothly the interlocutor is hardly aware of it.
Give a smoothly flowing, elaborate description or presentation on a complex topic, and can handle difficult, unpredictable, and even hostile questioning.
Summarize orally information from different sources, reconstructing arguments and accounts accurately, coherently, and concisely.
Express themselves in a letter in a consciously ironical, ambiguous and humorous way, with good command of idiomatic expressions and colloquialisms.

Main C2 grammar points:

Review and deepening of grammar starting from complex authentic material
Idiomatic expressions and colloquialisms – part two
Language and cultural references
Analysis of style and register