General English

The General English program consists of five levels. These levels start from Elementary and continue in increasing difficulty through Pre-Intermediate, Intermediate, Upper-Intermediate, and Advanced. Students study all four skills (speaking, writing, listening, and reading). Topics selected in the Evolve series are meant to appeal to a range of adult interests from Eating and Drinking (Elementary) to Robots and Science (Advanced) to Global Issues Facing the World Today.

Each of the five levels is divided into four parts. One part of a level consists of 40 hours of classroom instruction and interaction time with a native-speaking teacher. Therefore, students will need to complete 160 hours of instruction before they can proceed to the next level. These 160 hours are supplemented with homework assignments both on paper and online through “practice extra’ Homework is checked by the teacher and feedback is provided. Students are also encouraged to use our Student Resource Area which includes library materials as well as e-learning resources available through computer work stations.

Each level contains twelve units and there are production assessments included in each unit as well as progress tests and an end-of-level test to ensure that the course learning objectives are being achieved. These tests assess listening, reading as well as grammar and vocabulary knowledge. Speaking and writing skills are assessed against course learning objectives throughout the term in class activities and recorded as part of the ongoing production assessments.

EDULINK teachers utilize the Communicative teaching approach to language learning in which students acquire language through participating in interactive activities which simulate authentic language user situations. This is the standard language-teaching method taught during the CELTA teacher-training course, a qualification which all EDULINK teachers need to have. Other methodologies, such as Task-Based Learning, are used as well when they suit the circumstances in order to address different student learning preferences.