ESL: Port of Entry Full-Time Program Low-Advanced

This is the low-advanced course designed to provide nonnative student with the academic, linguistic, verbal, aural, and note-taking skills necessary to succeed on the TOEFL exam and in higher education. Students apply their grammatical, written, and reading skills to pre-collegiate materials. This class will familiarize the student with the reading and writing skills necessary to succeed in academic environments. Through various integrated activities, the note-taking, reading strategies, and written expression of students will be enhanced. Topics and genres are varied corresponding to college curricula in the United States.

Students will practice the following functions:

Reading:

• Previewing, highlighting important information
• Note-taking, Interpreting authors' ideas
• Becoming aware of voice in texts
• Understanding how sources are cited in academic writing
• Finding supporting details and point of view
• Distinguishing between reasonable and unreasonable references
• Following steps for handling unfamiliar vocabulary and word analysis
• Learning multiword expressions, synonyms, and polysemy
• Defining and paraphrasing
• Determining the main idea and making inferences
• Supporting or refuting statements
• Previewing and sharing information
• Interpreting elements of fiction
• Understanding definitions of scientific terms in texts
• Learning word families and collocations
• Recognizing arguments and understanding analogies

Writing:

• Identifying writing to entertain, to inform, to persuade
• Narrowing down a general topic
• Choosing the right words and tone for their audience
• Recognizing the three steps of the writing process: rewriting, writing, and revising and editing
• Recognizing the parts and format of a paragraph
• Identifying and using transition signals for chronological and spatial
• organization, and for adding ideas and examples
• Practicing paragraph revision by using a checklist
• Checking grammar for various common errors, such as subject/verb agreement and sentence fragments
• Recognizing the introduction, body and conclusion of an essay
• Writing cause and effect, comparison and contrast, problem and solution
• essays, and expressing opinions
• Writing essays for undergraduate and graduate school applications

Listening:

• Developing listening fluency in English
• Learning the language of business meetings
• Scanning information
• Determining focus
• Making sense of what it is heard
• Becoming familiarized with the major rhetorical patterns of formal spoken English
• Recognizing cue signals for the five targeted rhetorical patterns: Chronology, Process, Definition/Classification, Comparison/Contrast, and Causal Analysis
• Pre-listening exercises will include: Listening preparation, previewing vocabulary and sentence structures, and learning rhetorical listening cues
• Post-listening exercises will include: Recognizing information and checking for accuracy, using and expanding on the information in the talks, recapping information from one's notes, and expanding on the information in the talks
• Consolidation will include reinserting the message units into the contextual and syntactic whole of the talks
• Understanding the redundancies, reiteration, and verbal fillers used in natural speech

Speaking and Critical Thinking:

• Modeling and imitating natural speech
• Clearly enunciating
• Learning how to follow the natural speed of spoken English
• Discussing academic topics of the talks, including history, language and acquisition, geology, and ecology, to name just a few
• Expressing opinions in discussions
• Using different registers for different audiences and situations
• Summarizing and paraphrasing through speech after the talks
• Using note-taking to refer to details in the after-listening discussions

Upon successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• Preview and highlight important information in textbooks
• Become aware of authors' voices in different genres
• Recognize and compose the different parts of an essay
• Recognize polysemous vocabulary
• Practice vocabulary through word families and collocations
• Determine main ideas and supporting details
• Make inferences from reading passages
• Learn how to cite sources in academic writing
• Produce different types of essays including cause and effect, comparison and contrast, and problem and solution
• Paraphrase reading selections
• Recognize transition signals and their functions in both reading and writing
• Predict the content of formal lectures and informal conversations
• Listen for and note tone of voice which indicates speakers' attitude/stance
• Identify/note expressions used for clarification and rephrasing in lectures/conversations
• Use graphic organizers to categorize/organize information/notes
• Infer meaning of vocabulary from contextual clues
• Listen for, identify, and note the main ideas (gist) and supporting information from lectures/conversations
• Distinguish between main ideas and details
• Identify kinds of supporting information (examples, reasons, statistics, analogies, etc.)
• Construct a basic outline to sort main ideas and supporting information from lectures
• Listen for expressions/signal words to guide note taking from lectures and conversations
• Listen for and note information that labels/explains; indicate quantity, measurements, or amount, time, sequence, and chronology, consequences, likes/dislikes/preferences, comparison/contrast
• Listen for and note expression that link the "'pros and cons" of an issue
• Identify and note the "pros and cons" of an issue
• Distinguish fact from opinion
• Use abbreviations to take notes on lectures/conversations
• Orally express/defend personal perspectives, observations, experiences, and opinions, predictions, stories, agreement, and disagreement, likes, dislikes, preferences, hopes, and wishes
• Brainstorm oral responses (class/groups)
• Ask for confirmation/explanation in formal/informal situations
• Morally compare and contrast student responses/lecture information
• Construct arguments to refute/challenge/support opinions/assumptions
• Orally report events in chronological order
• Orally generate and support generalizations
• Orally use academic vocabulary from lectures appropriately
• Make inferences from informal conversations/formal academic lectures
• Identify and discuss main ideas from lectures/conversations
• Identify and discuss supporting details from lectures/conversations
• Orally paraphrase main points, supporting details, issues, and problems from lectures and problems from conversations
• Select relevant information from notes to summarize lecture/conversations