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.