- Online
- $385
Designed especially for international professionals, this practical and intensive course helps you understand and use common English idioms in workplace and everyday contexts.
Learn how idiomatic language shapes conversations, meetings, workplace relationships and informal interactions, and develop strategies for interpreting meanings quickly and confidently, and for applying your own idiomatic expressions at work and beyond.
Through interactive speaking tasks and guided practice, strengthen your ability to recognize idiomatic expressions and use them appropriately in professional and social situations while building your fluency, confidence and cultural understanding.
By the end of the course, you will be able to:
- Understand and interpret common workplace and social idioms
- Use idioms naturally in conversations, meetings and emails
- Adapt idiom use based on context (formal vs informal)
- Respond confidently to idiomatic language in real-time communication
- Improve overall fluency and cultural competence
Course outline
- Week 1: Understanding idioms and their everyday use
- Week 2: Idioms for meetings and other professional communication
- Week 3: Idioms for emails; principles of clear communication
- Week 4: Idioms for problem-solving, critical thinking and workplace challenges
- Week 5: Idioms for workplace relationships and difficult conversations
- Week 6: Building social fluency & final integration
How am I assessed?
This is a non-credit course without letter or numerical grades. You receive verbal feedback on your English communication skills from your instructor during class. Short homework assignments are typically reviewed and discussed in class. Some lesson modules may include quizzes.
Record of completion
Students who have successfully completed a course can access completion documents two weeks after the course ends. Course completion means 80% attendance and/or 80% completion of mandatory assignments.
Course format
This course is offered in both in-person and 100% online formats.
Materials will be available in Canvas for three weeks after the course ends, after which time you will no longer be able to access the course.
About online learning
Our online English communication courses offer you a real-time virtual classroom experience where you can see and interact with your teacher and classmates. Each week, you log in at a set time to your class using our intuitive learning management platform, Canvas. Through Canvas, you access Zoom, a web conferencing app, for your live class. Just like in a classroom, you do individual, pair and group work, ask questions and receive verbal feedback from your instructor.
Outside of class time, you can access handouts and other materials online at your own pace and rhythm. You might be doing readings or watching videos to prepare for your next class, or practising with the material you have learned in your previous class. You do get out what you put in.
In order for a virtual classroom to be successful, we want to see your faces! Please be prepared to participate with your video turned on. We provide virtual drop-in sessions for you to test out the Zoom app before your first day of class. We will also send you instructions on accessing Canvas before your course begins.
Learn more about online learning at UBC Extended Learning.