Courses

International House Porto offers a wide range of professional English courses. These are courses with content and skills practice designed for specific professions, such as medicine, law, I.T., accountancy, engineering, military or hospitality. We do not list here the content of all of our professional courses. Rather, as an example of what we can offer, below is a selection of courses of interest to lawyers.
Please contact us for further details of our other professional courses.

Legal English

This course covers the most important areas of commercial law, and develops students’ reading, writing, listening and speaking skills as they relate to these areas of law. Appropriate vocabulary is introduced and practised, and differences between general English and legal English are explored. The course covers the following areas of law:

International Legal English Certificate (Univ. of Cambridge) exam preparation

The International Legal English Certificate (ILEC) is an internationally recognised legal English qualification, rapidly increasing in popularity among young lawyers in the Porto area. Although a relatively new exam, ILEC is starting to be recognised as a key differentiating factor among law firms who are increasingly looking to recruit young lawyers with demonstrable English language competence.
Our course completely prepares students to perform successfully in the ILEC exam, as well as covering the most important areas of commercial law. Students are totally familiarised with the exam format, the important evaluation criteria and the key elements for exam success. We develop students’ effectiveness in reading, writing, listening and speaking skills, which are directly transferable to real work situations. For example, students’ quality of writing and clarity of speaking will undoubtedly become more effective.

Business English skills

IH Porto also specialises in running courses to develop students’ practical business language skills. According to participants needs, we will arrange personalised courses covering one, some or all of the following specific skills:

General English

For those students who first need to establish a firm foundation of grammatical and lexical understanding, we recommend a general English course. On this course, we will cover all the areas of grammar essential to gaining confidence in the language, as well as focussing on the production of the areas of vocabulary which are useful for the specific group of students. We also demonstrate and practise correct English pronunciation. Finally, we begin the development of reading, writing, listening and speaking skills necessary to put the newly acquired linguistic competence into practice.