STUDENT
PROFILE |
Students enter
the Intermediate Level with enough ability in the use of English to function
independently in most familiar situations. |
WORK Students can function independently in their jobs, handling job training and work situations that involve oral communication skills on both a non technical and technical level. Written directions and materials may need to be simplified or clarified orally. Students at this level may offer help to beginning level students. |
LISTENING Students comprehend conversations containing some unfamiliar vocabulary. |
| SPEAKING Students have some ability to participate in face-to-face conversations on topics beyond their survival needs. They have the ability to clarify meaning by asking questions or by simply rewording. |
| READING Students can read simplified materials on familiar subjects and have limited success when attempting to read some authentic materials. |
| WRITING Students can generate simple sequential paragraphs related to survival skills, personal topics, and non-personal topics with some errors. |
| COMPREHENSIBILITY Students can usually be understood with some effort by English speakers who are not used to dealing with nonnative speakers. |
INTRODUCTION
TO INTERMEDIATE-HIGH |
| ESL Intermediate-High course content emphasis is on fluency and communication. The instructor continues to teach and facilitate students in the skills of self-monitoring in written and spoken English. |
| Course content is relevant to lives of the students. Through needs assessments, topics are chosen in accordance with students' goals: general, vocational, or academic. |
| Students have participated in enough culture-orientated tasks in the classroom to act appropriately when faced with situations involving cultural differences. Topics such as taboos and politics are taught explicitly by focusing on contrasts among the students' own cultures. |
| Instruction at the Intermediate-High Level is student-centered. The teacher facilitates the guided practice of the lesson through cooperative learning and role-play. |
| Listening at the Intermediate-High Level is characterized by students' ability to comprehend conversations containing some unfamiliar vocabulary. On exit, students will be able to: identify main ideas and most supporting detail in factual material relating to everyday topics, detect the mood of a message by determining to a limited degree such components as the attitudes and feeling of the speaker of the urgency of the message, demonstrate understanding of stories and other passages when vocabulary and structures are in familiar contexts, and demonstrate understanding of everyday conversation with some repetition or slower speech. |
| Speaking at this level is characterized by students' ability to participate in face-to-face conversations on some topics beyond immediate survivals needs. On exit, students will be able to display some spontaneity and creativity in producing language patterns not previously learned or memorized; however, students make errors often. Also on exit, students will be able to: adjust language forms to the level of formality required to fulfill basic utterances by rewording or repeating in order to be understood by the general public, and communicate on the telephone on familiar subjects with clarification. |
| Reading at this level is characterized by students' ability to read and interpret simple. authentic materials on familiar topics (newspaper articles on current events, social letters, public information notices). On exit, students ill be able to: identify the main idea of a paragraph on a familiar topic, guess the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary and phrases from context, find information that requires drawing from different sections of a reading passage, draw meaning from passages by using syntactic clues, such as pronoun references, and identify relationships within a passage by using syntactic clues, such as transitional words, like "therefore." |
| Intermediate-High students can benefit from expressing themselves in writing using all the stages in the writing process. A trained writing process facilitator and writing process materials are available to instructors. The beauty of the writing process is that students write from within about what they already know and feel. Classes can brainstorm writing ideas, but writing topics are not assigned. Daily journal writing can be incorporated into the writing process. |
| Other appropriate writing activities for exit of Intermediate-High Level are: writing short paragraphs describing daily activities or past events, using chronological order, writing personal letters; and filling out authentic job applications and medical history forms. |