Elementary Level Courses

• 100/200 Reading and Writing
• 100/200 Listening and Speaking
• 300 Reading and Writing
• 300 Listening and Speaking
• 400 Reading and Writing
• 400 Listening and Speaking

Elementary Levels 100/200 Reading and Writing: After taking these courses, students will be able to use written English to get and receive information successfully within a limited range of personal and social contexts. The reading goals are for students to understand essential information in areas of practical need, in readings of level-appropriate texts, and in writings produced by peers. The writing goals range from the ability to generate lists and fill in forms to being able to communicate information with reasonable accuracy, summarize readings, and give directions. The grammar goals are for students to understand meaning expressed in basic structures of English and to make independent use of these structures with some degree of accuracy. The vocabulary goal is to acquire extensive recognition and sufficient active vocabulary for survival needs, adequate classroom participation, and increasing social interaction.

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Elementary Levels 100/200 Listening and Speaking: After taking these courses, students will be able to handle successfully a limited number of interactive, task-oriented and social situations. The listening goal is for students to be able to understand sentence-length utterances in a limited number of content areas, including personal background and needs, social conventions, and routines. Speaking goals include the ability to ask and answer questions and to participate in simple conversations related to students' most immediate needs. Vocabulary will expand to include recognition of high-frequency, concrete, daily lexical items. Production of lexical items is limited to expressing the most elementary needs. Pronunciation goals include a limited knowledge of stress and intonation rules. Production goals include the ability to produce phonemes both in isolation and in combination, and to use stress and intonation in speech so as to be generally understood with repetition by a sympathetic interlocutor.

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Elementary Level 300 Reading and Writing: After taking this course, students will understand that reading and writing are interrelated and can influence each other. They will understand the basic patterns of written English, and how to write well-organized paragraphs. They will begin to understand the search for meaning in level-appropriate texts, and be able at the basic level to connect previously read texts to present readings and class stimuli. They will begin to learn how to be active participants in reading discussion groups as they learn how to develop and organize ideas for writing. Students will be able to recognize and use basic grammatical structures in writing tasks, and they will be able to use vocabulary based on thematic readings in their own portfolios.

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Elementary Level 300 Listening and Speaking: After taking this course, students will be able to handle a number of task-oriented and social situations. The listening goal at this level is the comprehension of simplified spoken English discourse, longer and more complex than that at Level 200, on a variety of topics including personal background and needs, social conventions, personal interests and activities, and instructions and directions. Speaking goals include improvement of fluency and the use of spoken English to satisfy uncomplicated social demands, to maintain conversation with a sympathetic interlocutor, and to fulfill basic living needs. The vocabulary will expand to include high-frequency, concrete, personal lexical items. Pronunciation goals include recognition of the consonants and vowels of American English and their symbols and recognition of basic English stress and intonation rules. In addition, production of American English sounds, stress, and intonation will improve.

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Elementary Level 400 Reading and Writing: After taking this course, students will be able to read a wide variety of texts such as short fiction, essays, and news reports. They will take an active role in understanding what they read by applying reading strategies, discussing the concepts in group discussions, and responding in writing. Through meaningful interaction with the text and other readers, students will make overall gains in reading comprehension skills and in reading speed. The writing goals include learning to express ideas in response to readings as well as on personal topics. Students will be able to develop and organize their ideas within the essay format, proofread, and edit written work, and benefit from feedback. The vocabulary goals are for students to expand their knowledge and use of vocabulary and to become actively involved in structuring their own vocabulary acquisition. The grammar goals are for students to become increasingly conscious of the interaction of form, meaning, and use of grammatical structures. Accuracy will improve through explicit analysis of grammar in context and through meaningful writing activities.

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Elementary Level 400 Listening and Speaking: After taking this course, students will be able to understand and participate in informal conversations fairly fluently and appropriately. The listening goal is for students to be able to understand unsimplified native speaker conversations in simple social situations on familiar topics. The speaking goals include the ability to combine practiced and new material to communicate personal information on a variety of topics in sentence-length and longer conversational exchanges. In addition, students will be able to use appropriate strategies to control a conversation in which they are participants in such a way as to receive comprehensible input. At this level, pronunciation goals are for students to attain sufficient control of the pronunciation of English to be understood, with some repetition as needed, by sympathetic listeners.

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