fbpx

ESL – English as a Second Language

Introduction to our programs

Our intensive English course has been designed to provide students with the necessary language skills and basic information needed to function successfully in American society. For those completing the most advanced levels of instruction, classes are designed to acquire the English proficiency necessary to be accepted into U.S. colleges and universities.

The program is designed to provide students with dramatically improved language skills by using a standardized, intensive, and a comprehensive curriculum, which integrates listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills.

All courses offered by Rosemead College have multiple entry and exit points. These entry and exit points correspond with the 12-week classes. The TOEIC® Preparation and TOEFL® Preparation Programs are designed to accommodate open entry and exit. Students may join these classes at any time and may remain in the course until they have achieved the desired score.

Our small student-teacher ratio provides the students with the personal attention needed to master the English language.

Pre-BeginningLevel 1 - BeginningLevel 2 - IntermediateLevel 3 - High-IntermediateLevel 4 - AdvancedLevel 5 - High-Advanced

Pre-Beginning IEP – ABC

This course is designed for adult learners. It integrates the English needed for daily life in the USA: work, family, health, school, and other necessary topics. Students develop survival communication in English, obtain fundamental knowledge of English (alphabet, numbers, and basic sentences), and gain comprehensible pronunciation skills.
Course Learning Outcomes:
The objectives of this class are not only for students to master the alphabet, numbers, basic tenses, basic parts of sentences, contractions, and basic reading comprehension, but also to begin developing communicative competence through the study and practice of vocabulary and communicative functions, dictionary use and specific rudimentary grammatical structures.
To this end, listening drills and oral practice are used to help students develop receptive skills, as well as to reinforce basic structures of expression. By the end of this course, students will have developed survival communication in English, obtained fundamental knowledge of English, gained comprehensible pronunciation skills, and increased their motivation and interest in learning English.
After this class, students will demonstrate their ability by successfully completing the Level ABC final exam and by enrolling in RC Beginning IEP Level 1 class.
Performance Objectives
After the successful completion of each unit, students will be able to:
  • Properly introduce themselves to others, properly greet others, use different types of greetings, and talk about daily routine; properly use the verb “be,” subject and object pronouns, articles, and singular and plural nouns;
  • Properly introduce others, identify people and their occupations, correctly spell and pronounce different names, and politely begin a conversation; properly use the verb “have”;
  • Briefly describe family members, describe people using adjectives, ask questions about someone they don’t know very well, and identify people around them; talk about the present; use “it” to talk about time, properly use “would like” vs. “like.”
  • Invite someone to an event, ask and state the time, read a calendar, understand the meaning of early, on time, and late and apply those terms, and identify different articles of clothing.
  • Know different types of household chores, talk about how often they do chores using correct terms (very often, sometimes, etc.), and know different types of weather.
  • Name and describe different kinds of food and drink, read a menu and order food, write and ask for a recipe, and know when and how to use “how many” and “how much”.
  • Know-how and when to use the verbs “want,” “have,” “need,” “like,” learn the colors, descriptive adjectives used to describe clothing, give descriptions about clothes, and give brief summary about home and work locations.
  • Use the past time expressions, describe events using past tense, express feeling regarding a past event (happy, sad, etc.), and describe people and people’s expressions.
  • Use correct adjectives to describe the appearance, know different face/body parts, describe accidents and injuries, suggest remedies, know what to say at the hospital/doctor’s office, and ask for help if they are sick.
  • Describe special abilities/skills/talents, use adverbs correctly, properly make a request, accept/decline invitations, and use “can,” “can’t,” and “too” correctly.
  • Describe significant life events, give a personal biography, announce good and bad news, express wishes for the future using “be going to” and “would like + infinitive”.

Beginning IEP – Level 1

This course is designed for students to learn and use elementary English for everyday situations and purposes related to work, school, and the marketplace. Students will also learn how to pronounce the phonetic alphabet, focusing on American English Pronunciation.
Course Learning Outcomes
The objective of this course is for students to begin to enter into more abstract language functions; they talk about predicaments and will learn to speculate about future and past events. To this end, role-playing, group and pair work, as well as listening comprehension drills are carried out. Students are also introduced to basic reading and writing in English. The course additionally includes reinforcement of the phonetic alphabet, emphasizing American English pronunciation skills, concentration on vocabulary development, and continuing dictionary use.
By the end of this course, students will have a basic foundation of English grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and intonation. After this class, students will demonstrate their ability by successfully completing the Beginning IEP Level 1 final exam and by enrolling in RC Intermediate IEP Level 2.
Performance Objectives
After the successful completion of each unit, students will be able to:
  • Get to know someone, offer to introduce someone, talk about people, and interview a classmate; properly use the verb “be,” scan for facts, write a description of a classmate.
  • Accept or decline an invitation, ask for and give directions, make plans to attend an event, and talk about musical tastes; use prepositions of time and place; listen for locations, make personal comparisons; write a short paragraph about preferences.
  • Describe their family, ask about family members, compare people, and talk about small and large families; properly use simple present tense, identify similarities and differences
  • Discuss what to eat, make food choices, order and pay for a meal, and discuss food and health; use count and non-count nouns, demonstrate knowledge of definite article “the”; write a short essay about food;
  • Use non-action verbs, use time expressions; apply and personalize information; interpret a bar graph; write a short interview on health and exercise habits.
  • Use adjectives to describe trips and vacations; use the past tense of “be”, the simple past tense in statements and questions, use regular and irregular verb forms; draw conclusions from a text; write a guided essay about a vacation.
  • Use object pronouns, comparative adjectives, direct and indirect objects; paraphrase a text; write an email or letter explaining what clothes to pack.
  • Use modals “should” and “could,” express future with “be going to,” make decisions based on schedules and needs; write two paragraphs about trips.
  • Use superlative adjectives; write a short guide to a city including information on where to stay, visit and shop, use clauses with “if”.

Intermediate IEP – Level 2

Students practice and create dialogues, and develop strategies to learn language functions in order to converse at an intermediate level. The course covers spoken grammar, listening skills, conversational idioms and develops the student’s ability to communicate clearly.
Course Learning Outcomes
The objectives of this course are for students to further develop their productive skills. Students will encounter the challenges of giving presentations, introduction to short essays, reading and listening comprehension exercises, and will improve their English understanding and fluency.
Communicative functions include greetings, small talk, staying in hotels, driving, personal care, personality, the arts, and ethical choices, asking for confirmations and asking questions, while pronunciation focuses on the stress and tone required for understanding and speaking more fluently.
Students are also introduced to more complex grammar structures. Grammar includes an introduction to perfect tenses, parallel verbs, conditionals, spoken and written contractions with “how”, usage of past participles of irregular verbs, tag questions, subjects, objects, objects of prepositions, gerunds and infinitives, using nouns as adjectives, and expansion on some grammatical forms such as pronouns and modals.
By the end of this course, students will be able to function at an intermediate level of English by successfully completing the Level 2 final exam and by enrolling in RCE high-intermediate IEP, Level 3.
Performance Objectives
After the successful completion of each unit, students will be able to:
  • Introduce themselves, talk about experiences, gestures, and customs, use present perfect tense, use past participles of irregular verbs; listen for details; identify supporting details in a text; write a description of an experience.
  • Discuss movies and entertainment, use present perfect progressive tense, apologize and provide a reason for being late, listen for main ideas, evaluate ideas in a text, write an essay about violence in movies and on TV.
  • Talk about hotel services, use the future tense with “will,” modals for obligation, suggestions, and advice, make a formal, polite request; listen to take phone messages, draw conclusions and interpret a map in a text; write a paragraph explaining the reasons for choices.
  • Talk about transportation and transportation problems, rent a car, use past progressive, listen to infer outcomes; use critical thinking; write a comparison paragraph.
  • Discuss personal care and appearance, use indefinite pronouns, listen to take notes; predict from a text; write a formal letter.
  • Discuss food, nutrition, and food passions, differentiate between “use to” and “used to”; listen to personalize; compare and contrast, summarize a text, write a persuasive paragraph.
  • Talk about personalities, use gerunds and infinitives as direct objects, and gerunds as objects of prepositions, use positive and negative adjectives; synthesize information from a listening task; supporting reasoning with details from a text, make personal comparisons; write an essay describing someone’s personality.
  • Discuss the arts, use passive voice, transitive and intransitive verbs, infer point of view from a listening; paraphrase a text; write a descriptive essay.
  • Talk about computers, the Internet, use the infinitive of purpose, comparisons with “as…as”, comparatives and superlatives; relate a text to personal experience; write an essay evaluating advantages and disadvantages of the Internet.
  • Talk about ethics and values, use the real and unreal conditional, possessive pronouns; understand vocabulary from context; write an essay on personal choice.

High-Intermediate IEP – Level 3

This course covers high-intermediate grammar skills, pronunciation, idioms, and writing skills. Practice involves paragraph structures, tenses, modals, comparatives, superlatives, and clauses. It also focuses on interpersonal communication skills and pronunciation to increase students’ reading and speaking fluency, and comprehension.
Course Learning Outcomes
The objectives of this course are to expose students to more complex uses of previously studied grammatical structures, such as clauses, comparisons, modals, conditionals and gerunds, and infinitives. Students are introduced to passive and active voice and quoted and reported speech. The emphasis is on how to use these complex structures correctly in both written and oral forms. Students further develop productive skills through group/pair work, journals, presentations, reading, and more complex writing exercises, such as an introduction to a five-paragraph essay.
The communicative functions include discussing health matters, quality of services, preparing for emergency situations, giving opinions, and discussing interests. Students will practice communicative functions through extensive pair and group work, listening comprehension exercises, reading, and writing exercises. Students will be introduced to additional authentic materials to stimulate critical thinking and promote a more sophisticated level of verbal expression.
By the end of this course, students will be able to function at a High-Intermediate level of English by successfully completing the Level 3 final exam and by enrolling in RCE Advanced IEP Level 4.
Performance Objectives
After the successful completion of each unit, students will be able to:
  • Make small talk, discuss etiquette across cultures, use vocabulary which relates to manners, use tag questions and the past perfect tense; listen for main ideas, predict and confirm facts, write a formal and informal e-mail message.
  • Make a medical or dental appointment, discuss treatment and medications, use modals to draw conclusions and express possibility; listen for details, write a comparison and contrast essay, make comparisons, comparative and superlative forms of adjectives and adverbs.
  • Request services, plan a meeting or an event, use causatives, listen for specific information, identify supporting details in a text, write an essay expressing a point of view, connect ideas with “and”, “but”, “or”, “so”, “because”, “even though/although.”
  • Discuss reading for pleasure, use noun clauses and embedded questions; take notes, infer a speaker’s point of view; recognize points of view; write a summary and review a reading passage, use passive forms of modal verbs and past participles as adjectives.
  • Describe natural disasters, use quoted and reported speech, paraphrase a text, interpret data from a chart, and write about procedures for preparing for an emergency.
  • Discuss life plans, express regrets about past actions; use future tense and future in the past and perfect modals; infer a speaker’s motives from a listening task; write a short autobiography.
  • Discuss holidays and traditions, use adjective clauses with subject relative pronouns, reflexive pronouns and reciprocal pronouns, active and passive sentences, infer information from a listening task, scan a text for facts, and write a descriptive essay.
  • Discuss inventions and discoveries, use descriptive adjectives, use the past unreal conditional, identify cause and effect; write an essay about the historical impact of an important invention.
  • Discuss controversial issues, use non-count nouns, gerunds, and infinitives, summarize a listening task, use critical thinking, and write an essay presenting contrasting ideas.
  • Discuss a geographical location and give solutions to global warming; use prepositions of place, proper nouns, and infinitives with “enough,” understand unfamiliar vocabulary from context; write a geographic description of a country, state, or province.

Advanced IEP – Level 4

This course is designed to develop students’ advanced speaking and listening skills integrated with reading, writing, grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, and idioms for achieving academic and workplace goals. Group discussions, presentations, evaluations of lectures, and advanced parts of speech are introduced. This course will prepare students for the American college experience.
Course Learning Outcomes
The objectives of this course are to have students be able to produce a variety of cohesive ideas expressed through a range of complex written and oral structures. The students will further develop productive skills through group/pair work, presentations, reading, and being exposed to different genres of essays. Focus is also on perfect and perfect progressive tenses, parallel structures, run-on sentences, expansion of gerunds and infinitives, as well as an overview of verb tenses, and expansion of modals, passive voice, and irregular verbs.
Communicative functions in this course enable the advanced students to distinguish between real and hypothetical situations, informal vs. formal language, recognize sincere vs. sarcastic intonation, describe relationships and behavior, make promises, and express hopes. Additionally, students are enabled to infer meanings from context, express and support arguments or opinions, build vocabulary, read for ideas, and explore materials intended for native speakers.
By the end of this course, students will be able to function at an advanced level of English by successfully completing the Advanced IEP Level 4 final exam and by enrolling in RCE High Advanced IEP Level 5.
Performance Objectives
After the successful completion of each unit, students will be able to:
  • Describe personalities, compare perspectives on life; properly use gerunds and infinitives; write a descriptive essay on personality types.
  • Discuss musical preferences, benefits of music; use present perfect and the present perfect progressive, noun clauses, and participial adjectives; use parallel structure in writing.
  • Talk about financial goals, describe spending habits, talk about future plans and finished future actions by using future progressive and future perfect progressive; use the past unreal conditional in inverted form; present information in chronological order.
  • Discuss appearance and self-esteem, comment on fashion and style; properly use subject-verb agreement with quantifiers with “of,” express and support an opinion from listening; examine cultural expectations and present contrasting information; write a comparative essay.
  • Discuss social responsibilities, identify urban problems, complain about public conduct; properly use negative prefixes to form antonyms, possessives with gerunds and paired conjunctions; write a formal complaint letter.
  • Debate the value of animal conservation, exchange opinions about the treatment of animals; properly use passive voice with modals; write a persuasive essay.
  • Describe consumer shopping habits, give shopping advice; use passive forms of gerunds and infinitives; summarize and paraphrase another person’s ideas in writing.
  • Discuss family trends, discuss parent/teen issues; properly use repeated comparatives and double comparatives, recognize run-on sentences and comma splices; write a descriptive essay;
  • Present a theory about a past event; evaluate the trustworthiness of news sources; speculate about history’s mysteries; use indirect speech with modals and perfect modals in the passive voice for speculating about the past;
  • Explain the benefits of leisure activities, describe hobbies and other interests; use adverbs of manner; write an essay commenting on another’s point of view.

High-Advanced IEP – Level 5

This level focuses on more frequent reading, writing, and speaking practice, in addition to the advanced grammar involved in these outlined skills. This real-life focus prepares students for TOEFL or TOEIC examinations and college courses.
Course Learning Outcomes
The objectives are for students to focus on the application of all grammatical structures and English usage acquired up to this level, rather than on the prescriptive study of grammar. This is achieved through the utilization and analysis of structures found in culturally authentic materials, such as magazine and newspaper articles, short literary works, and videos. Students will also be exposed to phrasal verbs.
This course integrates college-level reading, writing, discussion, critical thinking, and note-taking skills. Students will properly integrate advanced vocabulary and idioms into college-level compositions. Students will engage in American discourse styles, such as debates and discussions, wherein the teacher will elaborate on a challenging topic from the text to evoke student’s oral communication skills.
After this class, students will demonstrate their abilities by successfully completing the High-advanced IEP Level 5 final exam and by enrolling in RCE’s TOEFL or TOEIC classes, or by transferring to an institution of higher learning.
Performance Objectives
After the successful completion of each unit, students will be able to:
  • Explain life choices and plans, describe a person’s continuing activities, share their dreams and goals in life, and discuss job qualifications and work experience; use present perfect and present perfect progressive, correctly use stative verbs; express and support an opinion and write a biography.
  • Discuss the social uses of lying, express regret and take responsibility, discuss helping others, and explain the moral of a story and use adjective clauses; write a five-paragraph essay about an experience.
  • Describe a dangerous or challenging experience; express frustration, empathy, and encouragement; describe how people confront adversaries, and discuss the nature of heroism; describe the relationship of past events and actions to each other; reduce adjective clauses to adjective phrases, listen to summarize; and write a summary of an article.
  • Describe shortcomings, talk about ways to manage stress, discuss how to handle anger, identify what’s important in life; identify the subjunctive; evaluate ideas in a text.
  • Present views on superstitions, evaluate suspicious claims, identify fears and phobias, and describe and interpret a dream; reduce adverb clauses to adverbial phrases, properly use coordinating conjunctions, scan for information in an article; write an essay on superstition.
  • Express regret and relief, ask someone for a favor, describe a travel nightmare, and explain a life-changing event; use conditional sentences with mixed time frames; use critical thinking in listening and write a comparison essay.
  • Compare their strengths and weaknesses, define intelligence, explain how they produce their best work, and debate preferential treatment for the gifted; use subordinating conjunctions and transitions and write a descriptive essay.
  • Discuss the health benefits of laughter, respond to a joke, explain why something is funny, and explore the limits of humor; use indirect speech and write a cause and effect essay.
  • Discuss the feasibility of future technologies, describe applications of innovative technologies, discuss future trends and consider ways to protect the environment; use passive voice: the future, the future as seen from the past, and the future perfect; infer information from a text and write an essay predicting life in the future.
  • Describe the cultural impact of foreign imports, react to news about global issues, discuss the economic impact of globalization, and discuss the role of English in international communication; use transitive phrasal verbs; determine when and how to separate transitive phrasal verbs and write a persuasive essay.