English Courses

At ICALC, our instructors hold either a Master’s or PhD in Linguistics, Translation, English, and Writing fields and have designed lessons that encompass vocabulary building worksheets, grammar exercises, reading analysis, and writing skills activities focusing on current topics that are aimed at sparking their intellectual curiosity. In our English courses, we always assign grammar and writing assignments each week tailored to reinforce the concepts that students learn in the classroom, and to provide them with an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge on paper. It is our goal to build up our students into confident writers. By providing the proper skill set, guidance, and nurturing environment, we have seen great improvements in our student’s writing abilities. Our students can attest that English class is not always easy. Mastering the grammatical skills and nuances of our language is a lifelong journey that requires experience and good old fashioned practice as these skills are vital to a child’s development. We believe that reading and writing is a crucial and interconnected process that helps a person reflect and understand the world around them. A child who is able to write skillfully, possesses the ability and freedom to narrate and shape their own futures.

Here are introductions to our various levels of courses:

Lower-levels: G1, G2, and G3

Course Description

These courses offer introductory material on writing correct sentences within simple paragraphs where students can learn to identify their own voice as writers. When children learn to see, think, and make decisions as writers, they are empowered to actively engage with their writing task at hand. This eliminates the anxiety and guesswork from the writing experience. These courses build up on each other as they have been designed for students to master their reading comprehension skills and set the grammatical foundation to develop narrative, descriptive, and expository writing pieces. By being exposed to a wide variety of topics, students will learn new concepts to spark their ideas and write well-crafted sentences and simple paragraphs.

G1, G2, and G3 English courses are designed to empower students to:

1. Improve their reading skills while enjoying topics of interest.
2. Become familiar with high-frequency words used in academia
3. Develop critical thinking skills when analysing passages
4. Write full, concise, and coherent sentences

The key components of these courses are:

1. Reading
2. Vocabulary
3. Grammar
4. Writing
5. Critical Thinking Skills

Course Assessments:

Our teachers provide personalized attention to students during class as they can share their responses from the handouts provided before class. Through our interactive in-class grammar and reading comprehension exercises, students will have the opportunity to actively participate and learn from their peers. Homework is assigned on a weekly basis, and it is marked and returned to students with detailed feedback and advice on how they can improve their writing.

Intermediate levels: G4, G5, and G6

Course Description

These courses focus on writing clear and coherent paragraphs which will introduce students to the essentials of essay structure writing. The lessons feature prompts on different kinds of paragraphs and an introduction to writing academic essays. As it is important to both produce a presentable product and to understand the composing process, students will learn key grammatical mechanics and vocabulary that will help them transition from paragraph to essay writing with ease. Students will be encouraged to produce well-crafted definition, process, classification, narrative, descriptive, and persuasive paragraphs and essays by following the writing process. As a core of the curriculum, the class will be exposed to videos with the goal to build their critical thinking skills (synthesizing, inferring, applying, predicting), and journalistic passages that will refine their reading comprehension skills (scanning, skimming, as well as main ideas, details, and purpose identification). This will lead students to  engage in discussions where they can apply their analytical skills to expand on their own take on the content of the material.

 G4, G5, and G6 English courses are designed to empower students to:

1. Improve grammar skills and academic vocabulary
2. Apply critical thinking skills when analyzing videos and reading articles
3. Engage in intellectual discussions
4. Write well-crafted paragraphs and essays
5. Restate the main idea of complex written passages

The key components of these courses are:

1. Writing (Expository Writing, Narrative Writing, Descriptive Writing, Persuasive Writing etc)
2. Reading （National Geographic Articles etc )
3. Grammar
4. Vocabulary
5. Critical Thinking

Course Assessments:

1. Students will be assigned
2. Paragraph assignments
3. Essay assignments
4. Grammar and Vocabulary Homework
5. Presentations

Advanced levels: G7/G8, G9/10, and Advanced Writing

Course Description

Since the focus of our upper level writing classes is to enable students to produce outstanding academic writing pieces, our lessons focus on academic essays and critical assessments. Our essay-writing component comprises: compare and contrast,  cause and effect, problem and solution, argument, opinion, and reaction essays. The central point for the critical assessment portion is to help students navigate through the nuances of language and grammar when writing a book, article, or movie review. By applying their analytical skills, students will have the opportunity to assess real academic prompts that are intended for university-level audiences while examining their purpose, tone, and argumentation evidence. This will allow the class to engage in advanced intellectual discussions around current cultural topics where students can build up their communication skills. The intensive immersion in reading comprehension and vocabulary practices is intended to expose students to eye-opening insights, inventions, viewpoints, and cultural practices in the world. 

 G7/8, G9/10, and Advanced Writing courses are designed to empower students to:

1. Build on academic grammar and vocabulary skills
2. Apply critical thinking skills when analyzing videos and reading articles
3. Engage in intellectual discussions
4. Write well-crafted essays and critical assessments
5. Evaluate university-level prompts
6. Practice paraphrasing, summarizing, and synthesizing 

The key components of these courses are:

1. Writing ( Expository Writing, Opinion Writing Problem and Solution, Argument Writing, Critical Assessment etc);
2. Analytical Reading and Critical Thinking(National Geographic Articles, TED Talks etc);
3. Grammar.

Course Assessments:

1. Paragraph assignments
2. Essay assignments
3. Article assignments
4. Review assignments
5. Grammar and Vocabulary Homework
6. Presentations