ESL Program Objectives

Objectives of the Immersion Module

Global summary:
Through exposure to massive amounts of comprehensible input at the appropriate level of difficulty, students will attain at least a lower-intermediate level of comprehension when listening to clear, careful English spoken by a variety of speakers discussing a broad range of everyday topics.

Experiential objective:
Students will be exposed to a variety of common English words, sentence structures, idioms, collocations, pragmatic devices, topics, etc., as manifested in film presentations and classroom discussions. This rich and varied input will be made comprehensible through the use of images, paraphrases, demonstrations, etc., with particular emphasis on the Focal Skills Movie Technique.

Programmatic objective:
Students will attain a level of listening comprehension sufficient to enable them to work productively in the Reading Module.

Proficiency objective (TOEFL):
Students will attain a level of listening comprehension comparable to that represented by a 45 on the listening section (Part 1) of the paper TOEFL.

Proficiency objective (standard IEP equivalent):
Students will attain a level of listening comprehension comparable to that of an average student placed in Level 3 of a six-level university intensive English program.

Proficiency objective (performance measure):
Students will earn a score of at least 60% (adjusted for guessing; = 80% raw score) on one of the validated parallel versions of the Focal Skills Reading Assessment. This assessment consists of 60 short dialogs, each followed by a single Yes/No question in which speakers discuss everyday events and concerns using standard American English. Each item is heard only once.