In each of our courses, students will improve their listening skills in a variety of ways. In this Listening Comprehension course, students will develop their skills while listening to the teacher read an informative or inspiring article each week, and also while discussing with their classmates a topic that is related to that week’s article. The teacher will not evaluate the students’ listening comprehension with the traditional methods of Multiple-Choice questions or True-False statements. Instead, students will retell some of the information they have just heard from the teacher’s article, discuss comprehension questions about that article, and retell some of the things they discussed in their small group about the related topic.

This course involves students in lively interactions based on real-life contexts: community, academic, employment, home, and social settings. Students also learn discourse strategies: initiating conversations, interrupting, hesitating, asking for clarification, and other conversational skills. First the teacher and the class practice as a whole, then the students practice in pairs and present a role play to the class. The teacher provides individual help with pronunciation and intonation during pair practice.

If you want to use what you learn from English grammar and to avoid making grammar mistakes in your communication, come to our IEP grammar class, where the teacher will point out your shortcomings and help you improve your English. While systematically focusing on grammar, our textbook, Understanding and Using English Grammar, is carefully designed to encourage students of English as a second language to talk, to promote vocabulary development, to engender cross-cultural interactions, or even to cause a smile or a chuckle in class. Learning grammar here is not only of much help but a lot of fun.

First, attention is given to writing good sentences with a variety of styles and constructions. Second, writing different kinds of paragraphs is practiced with special attention to good organization, coherence, cohesion, and unity. Third, different kinds of compositions are taught and practiced, such as essays, narrations, reports, as well as business and social writing, with attention to the unique style and organization of each. Assignments are corrected carefully and then rewritten.

American pronunciation is emphasized; however, British pronunciation is recognized, and comparisons are made between them. Sounds that are often confused are practiced together to help make clear the distinctions between them. There is a lot of drill practice as well as creative presentations by the students to help them identify their problem areas. Some individual time with the teacher is also provided for practice. Some attention is also given to word stress as well as phrase and sentence stress and intonation.