Course Detail
ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE (ESL)
60-90 Hour Course:
This course has been designed as a 60-90-hour course. It could be used over the course of 2.5 Months for classes that meet five days a week, or for an intensive course lasting 3 months or more.
- 30-45 hours theoretical - language function, grammar, and learning goals
- 30-45 hours practical applications - use of appropriate authentic material to extend learning to the "real world"
- 3 hours of final examination and evaluation
Course Objectives:
This general outline provides a solid function-based approach to course objectives. Courses can be greatly modified depending on the authentic materials you choose. Students should come out of the course confident in a wide range of communicative skills including:
- Daily life questions and answers
- Basic person and place descriptive abilities used in small talks
- Number, time, quantity, and cost use
- Daily life receptive understanding skills
- Written usage to express situations, give instructions and explanations, communicate opinions, and narrate and comprehend stories
- Specific terminology use based on students' needs.
- Proper envision of impersonal skills.
Basic Grammatical skills including use of the interrogative and discourse forms covering:
- Parts of speech
- Verb forms and other grammatical structures
- A quick go through tenses
- Introductions and greetings
- Asking for information
- Offering
- Requesting
- Inviting
Descriptive skills including:
- Comparative language
- Vocabulary building for people and places
- Communicative structures for expression of opinions
- Asking for descriptions
English numeration including:
- Time, quantity, cost and numbering vocabulary
- Buying and selling structures
- Requesting and giving the time
- Various numerical expressions including cardinal numbers, fractions, decimals and time etc.
Receptive skills development including:
- Listening comprehension focusing on varying elements of vocabulary and structure (songs and conversations)
- Video comprehension developing combined visual-audio receptive skills to deduce meaning from context (movie watch)
- Reading skills strategies including intensive skimming and scanning development tasks, as well as intensive reading exercises.
Writing skills development including:
- Development of basic writing skills applying studied grammatical structures
- Standard writing formats including formal and informal letters
- Expression of opinions in writing
- Descriptive Writing (picture description)
- Instruction flow writing skills
- Narrative written structures to express past events
Class communicative activities including:
- Role-plays in various authentic situations
- Debating various points of view to strengthen the ability to express points of view
- Information gathering activities concerning time, place, cost and personal descriptions
- Project development in groups and pair-work to increase communication practice
- Group generated narrative writing production
Specific targeted vocabulary development:
- Interviewing activities to enhance instruction and explanation processes with a specific focus on basic individual vocabulary needs
- Lexis development and extension in appropriate areas
- Role-play to increase active use of targeted language areas
- Group created written reports giving instruction on various aspects of target vocabulary.