OVERVIEW OF INTENSIVE ENGLISH PROGRAM CURRICULUM

Students and professionals come from around the world to study at the American English Institute (AEI), University of Oregon (UO). The AEI offers an Intensive English Program (IEP) for adults who want to improve their proficiency in English. The program prepares students for academic work at the UO or similar academic institutions or for professional activities in business and other fields.

 

The curriculum consists of six levels, from basic through advanced. Each level is divided into two combined skill areas: literate skills, which emphasizes reading and writing; and oral skills, which emphasizes speaking and listening. Literate skills courses each meet for 13 hours per week and oral skills classes meet for 5 hours per week.

 

Effective Winter 2009 (January), literate skills courses will each meet for 12 hours per week and oral skills classes will meet for 6 hours per week.

 

All full-time students take basic curriculum courses at the appropriate level. Students may be placed in separate levels for oral and literate courses. Combined, these courses provide a minimum of 18 class hours per week, with up to 6 additional hours of elective courses. See course descriptions for Literate Skills, Oral Skills, and Electives below.

INTENSIVE ENGLISH PROGRAM BROCHURE AND STUDENT HANDBOOK

The Intensive English Program Brochure and the Student Handbook are also available for download in PDF (Adobe Acrobat Reader) format.

LITERATE SKILLS, ENGLISH PREPARATION THROUGH LEVEL 6

Number of Hours per Week: Literate skills courses each meet for 12 hours per week.

 

English Preparation (E-prep), Level 0: Students develop foundational literacy skills primarily through an aural emphasis. They develop their phonemic awareness and basic sound-spelling correspondence; write letters legibly; demonstrate use of the basic properties of the sentence; alphabetize words; use basic grammar for questions, statements, and simple prompted paragraphs; increase vocabulary to about 300 words; and follow effective in and out-of-classroom study practices.

 

Level 1: Students generally have a wide range of proficiencies and special needs. Students read a variety of short accessible texts, scan newspapers, learn and practice explicit reading skills and practice a variety of simple writing tasks such as prompted writing, guided paragraphs, retells, and dictation. Students are introduced to basic parts of speech and sentence analysis and increase their vocabulary to approximately 500 words.

 

Level 2: Students read ESL and level appropriate authentic texts. Students are introduced to text analysis, basic sentence and paragraph structure and revision. Students write a variety of compositions such as book reports, autobiographies, summaries, and responses to readings. Students also work on grammar and vocabulary development with special emphasis on parts of speech and collocations.

 

Level 3: Students begin more massive reading and writing. Students read a full-length text written for young adult native speakers and begin focusing on planning and developing paragraphs, basic summarizing, and writing more sophisticated sentences. Students also work toward more written fluency through journal and response writing and greater accuracy through revision of formal paragraphs and editing.

 

Level 4: Students read thematically related authentic but accessible articles from current online periodicals, or essays of 300-600 words to provide more intensive reading. Students begin to work on more advanced academic writing through essays, summaries, responses, and analyses. The level and quantity of reading and writing at this level strives to develop overall literate academic fluency.

 

Level 5: Students begin to develop higher college level reading, writing, discussion and critical thinking skills centered around a series of academic articles on contemporary issues and/or longer works of fiction or nonfiction. Writing focuses on practicing common academic rhetorical structures such as comparison/contrast, classification and cause/effect; these writings incorporate information from the articles students have read. The lexico-grammatical component of the course is addressed within the context of the articles and student-generated writing.

 

Level 6: Students use reading and writing to build on and further develop the academic and critical thinking skills covered in Level 5. It is a rigorous, fully academic, seminar-style course with performance expectations reflecting those demanded of American college students. Topics for the readings come from a variety of academic disciplines, and reading and writing tasks are at a much more sophisticated level with the rhetorical focus on argumentative writing expected in Writing 121 at the University. Writing assignments include well-supported argumentative academic essays of varying lengths that synthesize and appropriately cite source information in APA style. The grammar component at this level is fully integrated with writing assignments, highlighting at-need grammar points and more sophisticated grammar structures.

 

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ORAL SKILLS, LEVELS 1-6

Number of Course Hours per Week: Oral skills courses each meet for 6 hours per week. Students may be required to do additional assignments through the Yamada Language Lab or other computer-related sources may be required outside of class.

 

Levels 1 and 2: The curriculum is more heavily weighted toward listening than in higher levels. Students...

• Learn vocabulary and formulaic expressions for their immediate real-world needs.

• Listen to a variety of native speakers in order to improve their listening skills.

• Improve their oral fluency and pronunciation.

• Develop an awareness of sound/spelling correspondences.

• Learn strategies to compensate for their language limitations.

Levels 3 through 6: The curriculum is evenly balanced between listening and speaking. It is content-based with a wide variety of listening and speaking activities. Students...

• Develop academic listening, speaking and discussion skills.

• Develop their note-taking skills.

• Improve their pronunciation.

• Expand receptive vocabulary and increase their familiarity with idioms.

• Develop their critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

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ELECTIVE COURSE OFFERINGS

The elective curriculum consists of a variety of optional content-based courses designed to support students with their language learning, help students attain their goals, and offer additional language practice in a more relaxed manner. These courses focus on areas of special interest to students and meet for two to three hours a week. Although primarily designed to focus on content of special interest to students, these courses also provide additional authentic contexts for the development and reinforcement of all language skills.

 

Students can enroll in electives based on their Literate (Reading/Writing/Grammar--RWG) and/or Oral Skills level, as indicated below.

 

TOEFL preparation is an integral part of our elective curriculum. TOEFL preparation is offered every term as an elective course. Other elective offerings vary from term to term. Below please find a description of some recent elective offerings.

Paper-based TOEFL I
For students in Level RWG 4. This is a teacher-directed self-study class. This course focuses on developing the skills and test-taking strategies necessary for the TOEFL. It also provides an overview of the test formats.

 

Paper-based TOEFL II
For students in RWG 5 and 6. This is a teacher-directed self-study class. This course focuses on developing the skills and test-taking strategies necessary for the TOEFL. It also provides an overview of the test formats.

 

Internet-based TOEFL (IBT) I
For students in RWG 4. This is a teacher-directed self-study class. This course focuses on developing the skills assessed in the new Internet-basedTOEFL (IBT) test. The score from the IBT can be used at any U.S. college or university. The course has thematic units organized in the same way as the TOEFL IBT into listening, reading, speaking and writing activities. The course also has integrated skills practice to develop critical thinking and communicative competence. In this course, students develop academic skills in English, while building test-taking confidence.

 

Internet-based TOEFL (IBT) II
For students in RWG 5 and 6. This is a teacher-directed self-study class. This course focuses on developing the skills assessed in the new Internet-based TOEFL(IBT) test. The score from the IBT can be used at any U.S. college or university. The course has thematic units organized in the same way as the TOEFL IBT into listening, reading, speaking and writing activities. The course also has integrated skills practice to develop critical thinking and communicative competence. In this course, students develop academic skills in English, while building test-taking confidence.

 

Spelling and Decoding I
Required for students in E-prep and RWG 1. Students learn and practice the spellings of English sounds to help them become a better reader and speller. If a student feels s/he does not need this course, s/he can ask the reading/writing teacher for a waiver.

 

Spelling and Decoding II
For students in RWG 2 and 3. Students learn to read long English words quickly. They learn the spelling of common English vowel sounds and how to read long words such as “unconventionality” and “turnstile.” This class helps students learn to read and spell better and also helps with their pronunciation and listening skills.

 

Spelling and Decoding III
For students in RWG 4 who have already completed Spelling and Decoding II. Spelling and Decoding III is a continuation of Spelling and Decoding II. Students continue with chapter 8 in the "Rewards" textbook.

 

Pronunciation
For students in Oral Skills 4, 5, and 6. Students develop pronunciation skills in the areas of individual sounds, words and sentence stress and intonation. They have many opportunities to practice and their speaking skills.

 

Academic Vocabulary
For students in RWG 5 and 6. This course is designed to enable you to build your academic English vocabulary so that you can read university-level textbooks more fluently and with greater comprehension. You will study the 570 words in the Academic Word List to learn definitions, synonyms, collocations and word parts, as well as learn to recognize context clues. This elective requires that you do several hours of work outside of class weekly.

 

US Business and Economics
Oral Skills 4, 5, and 6. This class helps students develop language skills and acquire cultural knowledge to increase their confidence in social situations in the American business world. Students also begin to learn the concepts and vocabulary that are needed to understand the U.S. economic system.

 

Advanced Discussion
RWG 5 and 6, and Oral Skills 5 and 6. This elective course gives students the opportunity to build effective discussion skills while strengthening their oral and aural English skills. They gain experience and confidence in being an active discussion participant as well as a strong discussion leader.

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NOTE TO UO (NON-AEI) STUDENTS

Students enrolled at UO should refer to courses offered in the AEIS Program description and/or in UO Catalog of classes. UO students register for AEIS classes through the online Duckweb system.