Beginning ESL: Structure and TOEFL - 1st year


This course is for students with limited English experience who based on placement test results, instructors’ recommendations, and TOEFL scores, place below ESL intermediate level courses. The goal of instruction is on strengthening students’ command of basic English structures. Students are given the opportunity to become familiar with the format of the TOEFL examinations through use of TOEFL-style exercises on some of the basic English structures studied. These TOEFL exercises are based on selected sentences from the students’ text in their theme-based course. Timed practice TOEFL sessions are included to help students become skilled at working under time pressure.



Objectives:

By the end of the course, the student will be able to:

1. Basic English structures (orally and written)

a. Identifying subjects
b. Identifying objects
c. Selecting appropriate verb tense
d. Identifying modifiers
e. identifying and selecting connectors
f. number agreement
g. regular and irregular verbs in indicative mode
h. subject –verb agreement

2. Vocabulary

a. Recognizing that a word can have more than one meaning
b. Recognizing that certain suffixes give clues as to the class of words
c. guessing unfamiliar vocabulary
d. writing definitions
e. using learned vocabulary in oral production
f. Following basic instructions and directions to complete a task

Topics:

Course topics will include the following:

1. Oral practice with basic English sentence patterns in conversational context

2. Simple grammatical constructions

3. Written practice with basic English sentence patterns


Method of Instruction:

1. Lecture

2. Discussion

3. Modeling

4. Reading

5. Writing

6. Error Analysis