CURRICULAR STRUCTURE ESL 

WESTBURY LANGUAGE CENTER offers eight levels of ESL and two levels of conversation for advanced students. Each level has a duration of three months. 

BEGGINERS CYCLE

LEVELS 1 & 2

The Survival Language

Goal: to communicate, to give and request, personal basic information.

Achievements: to speak about oneself at the present moment and the immediate past; to talk about time, weather, and common things and activities; to address people in a courteous way, using appropriate expressions for social interaction.

Contents:

Level 1

·        Greetings, introduction

·        Spelling, to use numbers

·        Talking about time: hour, day, month, year, holidays

·        Sharing impressions about weather

·        Describing people, current things and situations

·        Expressing property, quantities

Level 2

·        Expressing ability, obligation, advice, recommendation, necessity

·        Being polite: to ask for and to give permission, help

·        Speaking about actual things and situations

·        Stating situations and facts that are happening or happened in the past

·        Talking about count and non count things and quantities

INTERMEDIATE A CYCLE

LEVELS 3 & 4

From Survival to Participation

 Goal: to communicate with more elaborated structures.

Achievements: to speak appropriately about the spatial and temporal environment; to compare and differentiate, to express taste and preference, to discuss immediate, remote, and possible future activities, and to speak and locate activities from immediate and distant past.  

Contents:

Level 3

·        Locating in time and space

·        Expressing basic temporal and spatial relations

·        Comparing people and things

·        Speaking about different future activities

·        Expressing likes, dislikes, preferences

·        Talking with different degrees of courtesy and obligation

Level 4

·       Distinguishing preference from responsibilities

·      Referring to and  distinguishing between activities according to their frequency

·      Making comparisons between countable and non-countable things

·      Expressing past events adequately (verbal regularities and irregularities)

·      Speaking about the past and its continuity or incontinuity in the current time

·      Talking about count and non count quantities

·       Expressing conditions for a future possible

INTERMEDIATE B CYCLE

LEVELS 5 & 6

Integration to a New Language 

Goal: to develop fluency in the use of the language.

Achievements: to speak according to the moment and the temporal relation, to talk about anything in a singular or plural way, to express singular and plural properties, distinguishing count and non-count, to use and distinguish voices and points of view, to express conditions and to refer to actions with adequate verbal use. 

Contents:

Level 5

·        Expressing relations in simple, progressive, and perfect tenses

·        Using regular and irregular plurals

·        Expressing possession in different ways

·        Referring to count and non-count quantities in singular and plural

·        Speaking in different voices: active, passive, of change of state, participial

 Level 6

·        Referring to other’s speech

·        Using comparative and superlative according to count and non-count nouns

·        Expressing conclusions and logical deductions

·        Using infinitives and gerunds

·        Expressing conditions

·        Using and distinguishing ways of speaking about past and present activities

ADVANCED CYCLE

LEVELS 7 & 8

Consolidating Communication in the Second Language 

Goal: to speak using all type of structures in different verbal times with fluidity and property.

Achievements: to use different adverbs and adverbial forms, to integrate different gerunds their speech, to express motivation and intention, to speak about real and unreal conditions in present, past and future tenses, to use reflective forms, and to express causality and logical order. 

Contents:

Level 7

·        Expressing temporal relations and frequency with time adverbs

·        Using gerunds as subjects, objects or objects of preposition

·        Speaking about indefinite things, using adverbial forms

·        Expressing motivation or intention

·        Speaking about real and unreal conditions

·        Expressing past unreal conditions

Level 8

·        Using all kinds of verbs adequately

·        Speaking about indefinite things, using different kinds of indefinite pronouns

·        Expressing reflective, infinitive, active and passive forms

·        Referring affirmative, negative or multiple options

·        Expressing cause and effect, alternative, adversity
 

EVALUATION

General Criteria

·        Attendance: it is obligatory and below 70% implies the repetition of the level. 

·        Goal accomplishments of the level: it is confirmed through:

o       Written tests in class: intermediate and final

o       Oral test at the end of the level

o       In both tests it is necessary to reach a minimum of 70%, on the contrary implies to repeat the level or, according to teacher’s criteria, to go to the next level repeating at the same time the previous one.  

·        Project of class: each level has a project that the student must present at the end of the course. In the case of the Eighth Level, the project is the graduation. 

·        Best Plus: WLC oral test that all the students must take when entering the program and, every 50 class hours. 

·        Best Literacy or TABE: WLC written evaluations that all the students must take after obtaining a score over 541 points on the Best Plus. These evaluations are given every 50 class hours. 

·        Graduation: finalizing the eighth level and after accomplishing all the evaluative requirements.

CONVERSATION CLASS FOR ADVANCED STUDENTS

Beyond the Basic ESL program

 Goals: to improve articulation, intonation and fluency; to enrich vocabulary and develop basic skills for academic text writing.

Achievements: to articulate adequately English phonemes; to keep a proper intonation of the language; to produce oral and  written speeches about  North American culture subjects; to write clear and coherent texts. 

Structure:

·       Enriching vocabulary

·       Reading and writing about specific subjects

·        Drawing conclusions

Activities:

·       Talking about selected topics

·       Practicing prepared dialogues

·       Reviewing vocabulary and pronunciation

·       Presenting parts of the personal project (from the final project)

Model:

·        Goals in English

·        Eating, ordering, and working  in a restaurant, commercial center

·        To give and to receive directions

·        Hospitals/Emergencies/Medical appointment

·         Entertainment/Music/Cinema

·        Their own country/Other countries/Immigration/Citizenship