Learn English Through TV Drama Series: Adrift (FutureLearn)

Take your English language skills to the next level by exploring pronunciation, complex phrases, and grammatical functions. Learn the core building blocks of conversation. On this five-week course from Chasing Time English, you’ll build on your language knowledge by watching and studying the television drama Adrift. This series focuses on instruction and adjacency pairs, which will help you develop the main building blocks of conversation.

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Explore adjacency pairs and typical conversational responses

Many conversations can be made up of two speakers taking turns, with the second speaker often using a contextual response to a question. These are known as adjacency pairs.

You’ll look at the different types of adjacency pairs in the English language to learn the context of these action-based conversations, such as invitations, compliments, and apologies.

You’ll also learn about using insert and pre-expansions; ways that you can gain more information before or during adjacency pairs.

Expand your knowledge of conditionals

Conditional sentences can take many different forms, but they’re all usually used to express the consequence of a hypothetical scenario.

In this course, you’ll investigate the second, third, and mixed conditionals. This will allow you to discuss hypothetical situations in the present or future, as well as alternate outcomes of past situations.

Improve your confidence in verbal and non-verbal communication

During the final week of this course, you’ll be introduced to performance practice, extending the focus on verbal and non-verbal elements and helping you gain confidence in communicating successfully.

What topics will you cover?

This is a course designed for English language learners including:

• Watching skills

• Speaking skills

• Pragmatics awareness

• Grammar activities

• Vocabulary activities

• Writing skills

• Reading skills

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

- Interpret important communicative concepts from visual and audio cues

- Improve awareness of complex grammatical functions and uses

- Perform dramatic scenarios using verbal and non-verbal elements

- Explore key features of pragmatics in communication
Who is the course for?

This course is designed for anyone looking to learn English at an upper-intermediate level.

To get the most out of this course, it is recommended that you have a minimum of CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) B1+ level English.