Syllabus
1) Greetings. Formal and informal greetings. Pragmatic aspects of the communication (communicators, setting, institutional communication). Verbal and non-verbal forms of greetings (handshake). Etiquette.
2) Introducing oneself. Forms of address. Professional and academic titles. Hypocoristic and diminutive. Politeness formulas. Impolite forms of address which may cause pragmatic failure.
3) Politeness in the Czech Republic. Pronominal addressing, T-forms and V- forms. Choosing communicative strategy in the context. Impolite forms of pronominal addressing which may cause pragmatic failure.
4) Small talk. How are you? Strategies Czech speakers use when answering How are you? Positive, negative and neutral answers. Safe topics (weather) and topics to be avoided (politics).
5) Complimenting. Strategies that Czech speakers use. Accepting a compliment. Modesty and approbation. Things that could be complimented on.
6) Requesting. Polite ways how to ask and request. Level of directness, lexical and grammatical modification of requests.
7) Shopping. Conversation with the shop assistant. Vocabulary (semantic field – food and drink).
8) Restaurant. How to order a meal. Vocabulary (semantic field – food and drink).
9) School, University. How to address a teacher. The organisation of the Czech school system. School subjects.
10) At the doctor’s. Emergency call. Illness. How to describe the symptoms.
11) Travel. Where are you from? Countries, cities. Means of transport.
12) Presentation of one topic chosen by the student (in pairs).
Annotation
The course objective is to practise conversation in Czech. Basic topics of everyday life will be covered: meeting and introducting, greetings, shopping, school and university, at the doctor's, travel etc.
The course is suitable for beginners and lower intermediate students of Czech language.