By teaching English through an integrated curriculum, we provide our students with passports to their future success. All grades focus on the four key skills – reading, writing, speaking and listening – and fully integrate world literature and grammar into practical and interesting lessons.

New students are equipped with the essential grammar and vocabulary that will permit involvement in their International School classes. The school offers specialist primary school classes for new students whose English is of a lower level than that of their peers. Throughout middle and high school, we equip students for life at university by following Cambridge Checkpoint and IGCSE courses. These are extremely practical and allow students to transfer their classroom learning into everyday situations such as reading newspapers and letter writing.

To prevent grammar and vocabulary remaining theoretical (and probably unused) we employ a plethora of ‘real’ literature (including novels, poetry and autobiographies) in Grades 1-12 to provide stimulating and useful examples of interesting, idiomatic English.
Many of our high school students regularly enjoy English movies, books and games in their free time thanks to the skills they have acquired through their classes. We have also sent successful graduates to UK and US universities, where they have found it easy to adapt to the local culture due to their excellent conversational English.

 

Key Stage 1 (Grades 1 – 2)

At KS1, students progress from learning the alphabet and forming basic words to forming simple sentences, using simple tenses, punctuation and spelling conventions accurately and using adjectives and adverbs to convey additional detail in speech and writing. They will use suitably-levelled literature to master appropriate reading and listening techniques.
[heading] Key Stage 2 (Grades 3 – 5) [/heading]
At KS2, students begin to use progressive and perfect tenses with some accuracy in speech and writing, use modal verbs and other structures to convey more complex meanings and use their language skills to write and speak for a variety of purposes, including to entertain and to inform. Students will continue to use literature and other English entertainment to stimulate their interest in language.
[heading] Key Stage 3 (Grades 6 – 8) [/heading]
At KS3, students use simple tenses with confidence and use more complex structures with increasing confidence and fluency in speech and writing. They write and speak for purposes such as entertaining, informing, persuading and analysing and are familiar with the conventions of prose and poetry. Their knowledge of literature will expand and further stimulate their language learning.

[heading] Key Stage 4 (Grades 9 – 11) [/heading]
Students complete a 2-3 year IGCSE course at KS4. At the end of this course, students take a rigorous series of examinations that test the candidate’s speaking, listening, reading and writing. Students will have a firm understanding of the conventions of standard documents, such as letters and magazine articles, and will use reading and listening skills to locate details and make suitable inferences. Students will also have an extended English conversation about global issues as part of their assessment.
[heading] Key Stage 5 (Grade 12) [/heading]
Students use English lessons at KS5 to hone their existing skills and discover more advanced ways to use language structures in their writing and speech. They will study authentic texts from a variety of English publications including magazines, newspapers, novels and poetry.