Courses

The CIEP teaches classes grouped into four skill areas:

Each of these classes meets for 50 minutes every day from Monday through Friday.  The description for each class is as follows:

 

Listening and Speaking

In this course students learn to use every-day English as well as academic English so that they are comfortable in both the community and the university classroom.  Beginning levels focus on spoken and written sounds and learning vocabulary; intermediate levels focus on giving and receiving information, vocabulary, and the basics of note-taking; advanced levels focus on taking accurate lecture notes and extended out-of-class speaking opportunities in English.  At all levels, students are assigned an American conversation partner.  At all levels, students are also encouraged to ask questions and share their opinions and experiences as they interact with American culture.

 

Writing

The writing courses prepare students to plan, write, and fix their own compositions following the standards of Academic English (or College-level English).  In the beginning levels, students write about everyday topics while studying the alphabet, word form, and sentence structure.  The intermediate levels help students understand and follow the standards for a well-organized academic paragraph, and get students familiarized with the different types of academic writing that they might need in order to write at a college level: description, definition, narration, process, logical division, cause and effect, opinion, and so on.  In the advanced levels students write several five-paragraph essays and an eight-page research paper on academic topics. 

 

Grammar

In the grammar courses, students study, practice, and review grammatical structures necessary for life as a college student.  The classes emphasize a communicative approach to learning grammar; that is, students will have numerous opportunities both in and out of class to practice recognition and production of all the structures they learn.  In the beginning levels, students learn verb tenses and types of words, as well as practice capitalization and punctuation.  In the intermediate levels, students review verb tenses and learn adjective clauses and adverb clauses.  In the advanced levels, students learn more advanced structures such as conditionals and modifying phrases.  Students also learn how to write and edit compound-complex sentences.  We believe that grammar is better learned when applied to real-life situations, so students are encouraged to include the new grammar structures they learn in grammar classes in their compositions.  Therefore, the grammar teacher is also the writing teacher.

 

Reading

The Reading courses provide students with the skills, strategies, and practice necessary to read, comprehend, and analyze various types of texts, which better prepare them for the U.S. universities' extensive reading requirements and, therefore, to succeed in their future academic classes.  In the beginning levels, students read about everyday topics full of interesting facts and cultural information while acquiring basic reading skills, critical thinking skills, and active vocabulary study.  In the intermediate levels, students improve their ability to read longer, modified academic texts and increase their general reading/critical thinking skills.  In the advanced levels, students polish their reading skills and strategies, critical thinking skills, and study skills while interacting with different types of unmodified academic texts, which reflect college level reading materials and tasks.

 

To learn more about these courses, please review the CIEP handbook.

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