SKY Curriculum
English as a Second Language (ESL) Courses
Designed to improve Basic English or English as a Second Language (ESL) skills for adults who seek to improve their fluency and comprehension in the English language. Single-use assessments are used to provide measurable outcomes of improved language and literacy skills as well as gauge student readiness for careers, continuing education, and everyday life. Student-focused learning and increased instruction time are hallmarks of this program.
Basic 1
The primary goal of the course is to promote English language competency for personal purposes, applying learned and rehearsed English to real-life situations. The emphasis is on literacy and communication skills that result in the student functioning in society as rapidly as possible. This course focuses on understanding the areas of fundamental listening, speaking, reading, writing, language function, language form, and cultural literacy. A high level of individualized student support is provided.
BASIC 2
After this course, students should be able to perform simple social interchanges with ease in familiar settings and ask simple questions related to survival needs. Students should be able to listen for structured and well-defined purposes related to maintaining personal conversations or acquiring information, and be able to independently accomplish
defined and structured activities in familiar contexts with controlled vocabulary and punctuation.
INTERMEDIATE 1
An integrated skills format allows reading, grammar, speaking,
listening, and writing activities to be combined using the more intensive life-skill themes. After this course, students can express basic needs fluently and accurately,
as well as engage in conversations using structured sentences and paragraphs with control of basic grammar structures, spelling, and punctuation. A moderate level of support is provided. English language learners display growing comfort using English in daily interactions and social situations, but may still be uneasy in more complex, stressful contexts.
INTERMEDIATE 2
After this course, students should be able to speak fluently and accurately in more complex settings and comprehend relatively unstructured conversations and speeches of moderate length. They should be able to independently
accomplish well-defined and structured reading and writing of informative or expressive texts to complete various types of writing activities. Appropriate strategies (e.g., finding meanings or purposes, appropriate reading strategies, context clues, inference skills, and self-proofreading) are developed to become more competent English learners. English language learners display growing comfort in communicating with native speakers in various interactions and social situations.
ADVANCED 1
The goal of this course is for students to be able to comfortably and successfully communicate with native speakers in various settings, both in and out of the classroom. Students should be able to read and comprehend multiple pages with a variety of texts at an appropriate pace to independently analyze and accomplish reading activities with more authentic materials, and write well-structured paragraphs and edit and revise their own work to improve communication. The emphasis is on reading, writing, and learning to learn skills for the academic context. After this course, students can speak fluently and accurately and function independently in
social and work situations.
ADVANCED 2
The primary goal of this course is to promote English language competency for academic and professional purposes, applying English to university or workplace settings. Students should be able to read a variety of challenging texts in a variety of authentic settings such as newspaper and novel; can write coherent steps or well-constructed paragraphs for varied purposes related to professional and academic fields with the mastery of punctuation, grammar structures, self-proofread, and revise to improve communication. Appropriate strategies (e.g., finding meanings or purposes, appropriate reading strategies, context clues, inference skills, and self-proofreading) are used to develop independence and lifelong learning habits in adult learners.
TOEFL Preparation
Designed to teach the language skills and test-taking strategies needed to achieve a competitive score on the reading, writing, listening, and speaking segments of the TOEFL iBT examination. Students will take practice tests and familiarize themselves with the structure of the examination. The course analyzes the results to find areas for each student to improve, using the skills learned. The program includes test taking strategies for a successful score on the TOEFL iBT Exam, vocabulary, and intensive, structured development of test-related listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills. To be admitted into this course, prospective students must have successfully completed ESL Level 6, or the equivalent. Single-use TOEFL assessments will be administered to gauge a student’s testing strengths and weaknesses.