English Language for Academic Purpose Courses (ELAP)

Beginning academic ELAP students who do not have proficient basic communication and/or speaking skills will participate in basic listening and speaking exercises. Emphasis is on oral communication skills and the preparation of basic speeches. Individual, small group, and large group activities will expose the students to a variety of real-life communication scenarios. Upon completion of this level, students should be able to convey a desired oral message in a variety of social, occupational, and educational contexts. Requires appropriate score on placement test.

Intermediate academic ELAP students who have proficient basic communication and/or speaking skills will improve these skills and apply them to University settings. Using a communicative approach, the course is comprised of activities including small group discussions and short individual academic presentations. Students will have many opportunities to practice and gain confidence with their English speaking and listening skills. Some pronunciation practice is also included. Upon completion of this course, students should be able to produce and comprehend intermediate-level academic material. Prerequisite may be met with appropriate score on placement test.

This course, advanced ELAP students will focus on improving their oral communication and higher-level personal and academic conversation skills. Students will gain confidence by presenting academic presentations of various topics and discussing current events and issues. Students will also listen to longer academic lectures, using note-taking and listening skills to aid their comprehension. Upon completion of this course, students should be able to produce and comprehend advanced-level academic material. Prerequisite may be met with appropriate score on placement test.

Students will learn about the cultures and history of the American Midwest, with an emphasis on the Chicagoland area. Coursework will include observations, journals, and written assignments that document the students’ experiences living in the United States. Students will also discuss culture shock and compare and contrast American customs and procedures to their own, especially as they relate to academic studies and business.

Beginning ELAP Reading students will be introduced to vocabulary through brief reading passages. Emphasis is on understanding and correctly using English vocabulary, including vocabulary from the Academic Word List. Students will also be introduced to and utilize various reading comprehension strategies. Upon completion of the course, students should be able to comprehend basic reading passages. Prerequisite may be met with appropriate score on placement test.

Intermediate ELAP Reading students will enhance their reading and vocabulary comprehension skills while reading longer academic reading passages. The course will contain words from the Academic Word List, and students will learn about the structure of words and word parts including prefixes, roots, and suffixes. Upon completion of the course, students should be able to comprehend intermediate-level reading passages with more complex vocabulary. Prerequisite may be met with appropriate score on placement test.

Advanced ELAP Reading students will enhance their reading and vocabulary comprehension skills while reading longer reading passages from a variety of academic disciplines. Students will continue working with the Academic Word List to analyze vocabulary meaning and word structure. Students will focus on being able to correctly use vocabulary words in context. Upon completion of the course, students should be able to use comprehension strategies to understand complex reading passages from a variety of academic disciplines. Prerequisite may be met with appropriate score on placement test.

Beginning ELAP students will learn about English writing conventions and the structure of basic academic English sentences and paragraphs. Students will learn to identify and produce main ideas, topic sentences, and supporting sentences for various types of paragraphs. The course will introduce pre-writing strategies and the correct use of punctuation. Upon completion of the course, students should be able to produce simple, clear, organized paragraphs in a variety of social, occupational, and educational contexts. Prerequisite may be met with appropriate score on placement test.

Will introduce intermediate ELAP students to different purposes for academic writing including informative, process, persuasive, and descriptive paragraphs or short compositions. Attention is given to sentence variety including compound and complex sentences and the correct use of transition words. Students will learn how to effectively support their paragraphs with adequate details and to avoid irrelevant information. Upon completion of the class, students should be able to produce clear, cohesive, and well-supported paragraphs and basic compositions for a variety of social, occupational, and academic contexts. Prerequisite may be met with appropriate score on placement test.

Advanced ELAP students will compose well-structured and supported paragraphs and standard academic essays related to a variety of academic and basic business contexts. The course will introduce the conventions of analytical, expository, persuasive, and basic business writing, which students will apply to relevant academic and business topics. Students will also learn how to write a concise and clear summary and avoid plagiarism. Upon completion of the course, students should be able to write for academic purposes at a near-native level with minimal high-frequency mistakes. Prerequisite may be met with appropriate score on placement test.

Beginning ELAP students will learn about the basic writing conventions of English including the capitalization, punctuation, and grammatical structure of simple sentences using a variety of tenses including simple present, simple past, future, and past and present continuous. Students will practice using correct word order in basic statements, questions, and imperatives. Simple relative clauses and high-frequency, irregular, and auxiliary verbs will also be covered. Upon completion of the course, students should be able to produce clear simple written texts. Prerequisite may be met with appropriate score on placement test.

Intermediate ELAP students who understand basic English sentence structures and grammatical patterns will increase their fluency with English grammar exercises that include present perfect, past perfect, modals, passive voice, participial adjectives, regular and irregular verbs, gerunds, infinitives, and conditionals. Students will also use subordinating and coordinating conjunctions to correctly form compound and complex sentences. Sentence-level errors such as fragments, run-ons, and punctuation problems will be addressed. Students will also practice using transition words and parallel structures. Upon completion of the course, students should be able to produce clear and correctly formed simple, compound, and complex sentences in a variety of contexts. Prerequisite may be met with appropriate score on placement test.

Advanced ELAP students will continue to increase their English fluency by writing clear, coherent sentences and paragraphs using a variety of sentence structures. Coursework includes reviewing and implementing the English verb tenses, idiomatic expressions, punctuation, and articles. Students will also review how to show relationships between and among clauses by correctly using transition words and coordinating and subordinating conjunctions. Upon completion of this course, students should be able to produce English sentences at a near-native level using language appropriate for different contexts (formal and informal). Students should also be able to understand and produce a wide variety of frequently used idiomatic expressions in English. Prerequisite may be met with appropriate score on placement test.

This is a specialized course offered depending on student and faculty interest.

Advanced ELAP students who have already completed some level III ELAP coursework will work in consultation with the ELAP Director and/or an ELAP Instructor on a course designed specifically for the student’s academic needs. Business students will receive business readings, vocabulary, and assignments; nursing students will receive nursing readings, vocabulary, and assignments, etc. Students will be responsible for a research paper and a variety of projects related to their university major.