Students will gain understanding of oral and written material on various topics, ranging from general routine and leisure time activities, to more complex topics such as politics, environmental issues, and work environment. Students will be able to read and appreciate pertinent authentic texts with a clear structure, and will also be able to some extent to infer and extract from the material information which at first is only implicit. The understanding of material focusing on the expression of personal thoughts and feelings will progress to include increasingly sophisticated nuances. Students will be able to handle most uncomplicated conversation tasks and standard social situations. Students will be able to: debate and argue for opposite viewpoints on a range of topics and make comparisons and hypotheses. Presentation skills will solidify; skills in narrating in paragraphs will emerge and develop in a creative direction. Students will be able to write letters and short stories and demonstrate limited command of sentence syntax.