CURRICULAR STRUCTURE ESL

WESTBURY LANGUAGE CENTER offers ten levels of ESL and two levels of conversation for advanced students. Each level lasts ten weeks. 

BEGINNERS CYCLE

LEVELS 1, 2 & 3

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; to speak properly about spatial and temporal conditions; to compare and contrast; to express likes or preferences; to share experiences, current or distant activities.

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

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
• Expressing property and quantities

Level 3

• Locating in time and space
• Expressing basic temporal and spatial relations
• Comparing and contrasting people and things
• Talking about duties, responsibilities, and suggestions
• Expressing likes, dislikes, and preferences
• Using regular and irregular plurals
• Addressing other people using different degrees of courtesy

INTERMEDIATE CYCLE

LEVELS 4, 5, 6 & 7

From Survival to Participation

 Goal: to communicate with more elaborated structures: actual, past, future, possible o dependant.

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 4

·        Asking about identity, cause, way, option, time, etc.

·        Expressing past events adequately (verbal regularities and irregularities)

·        Referring to simultaneous activities

·        Making comparisons between countable and non-countable things

·        Commenting and distinguishing future events

Level 5

·        Expressing possibility, potentiality, or duty in relation to different temporal frames

·        Referring to option or alternative

·        Expressing continuity, frequency, or alternation of activities

·        Using adequately perfect tenses

Level 6

·        Expressing temporal coordination: precedence, posteriority

·        Using properly diverse word functions

·        Referring to other’s speech

·        Using infinitives and gerunds

·        Expressing conditions

Level 7

·        Talking about future or adverse conditionality

·        Expressing adversity or opposition

·        Using gerunds as subjects, objects, or objects of preposition

·        Constructing compound sentences, integrated adequately to relative pronouns

·        Including adjective modifiers in the speech

ADVANCED CYCLE

LEVELS 8, 9 & 10

Integration to a new 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 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

Level 9

• Reinforcing reading and writing strategies
• Paraphrasing written texts and speeches
• Sharing current cultural and social issues
• Arranging properly papers or speeches
• Reporting written texts or speeches

Level 10

• Familiarizing with college-level texts
• Using adequately logical relationships in written texts or speeches
• Reading graphic or statistical reports
• Making inferences or conclusions in relation to written texts or speeches
• Using academic jargon

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
• Current science and technology
• Legal issues

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 tenth level and after accomplishing all the evaluative requirements.