SUMMER SCHOOL IN ENGLISH
Summer Term, Academic Year 2008-2009

Dates:
English Course 1: start Saturday, 4th July and end on Wednesday, 29th July; 
English Course 2: start Saturday, 18th July and end on Wednesday, 12th August.

The daily schedule (Saturday to Wednesday): 
09:30a.m.-11.30a.m.    English class
11.30a.m.-12.25p.m.    Lunch and Prayer Break
12.30p.m.-02:00p.m.    English class

Cost: SR3,600/= per person per course.

Prerequisites:
The participants should be 15 years and above, and in Grades 10, 11, or 12 of Saudi private or public secondary schools.

Course Description:
This course is designed to provide students with the English language proficiency and the study skills necessary to succeed at high school and beyond. It helps to prepare them for this experience by providing a lively, happy, and secure classroom and university environment that is conducive to learning. Attention is given to individual development to ensure each participant will not only acquire skills in English language but will develop a love of language-learning which will last throughout their lives.

Course Objectives:
Saudi INTERLINK's overall goal in this program is to provide a summer school that will upgrade the reading, writing, communication, study and academic skills of the high-school participants in their preparation for the demands in English of secondary school and beyond. Saudi INTERLINK Language Center at Al Yamamah University aims at achieving these 6 objectives:

• Exposure to native-speaking English: The 4hours/5days a week contact hours with native speakers of English will offer a great opportunity to these young learners to immerse themselves into the language, improve their proficiency and pronunciation in English, as well as expose them to members of English-speaking cultures.
• Reading: Offer learning opportunities that will enhance the participants’ reading capacity by exposing students to a variety of texts of their choice (short stories, books, novels, newspaper articles) and fostering a fun reading environment where students are encouraged to use a repertoire of reading strategies to make sense of texts relevant to their age (skimming, scanning, predicting, guessing the meaning of words from context, using visual and textual clues, inferring, using background knowledge to make meaning out of text)
• Writing Assist participants to develop and improve their creative writing skills and provide practical experience and process-oriented (outlining, brainstorming, drafting and editing) guidance with using different simple writing styles (narrating, describing, explaining…) and editing techniques (capitalization, punctuation…)
• Communication Help participants improve their listening/speaking skills in English (pronunciation, stress, intonation..) through the use of student-friendly listening and speaking games, songs, role play activities and discussion of topics of interest and direct relevance to the students.
• Academic Help participants gain a basic understanding of soft academic and study skills, such as better time management, note-taking, questioning, mind-mapping, reading tables and graphs…etc;
• Attitudinal/motivational Provide a context for these young learners to build  their confidence vis-a-vis learning English as a Foreign Language and empowering them with the pre-requisite tools to become independent lifelong learners (better lexical repertoire, enhanced reading/writing ability, creative and critical thinking, and collaborative learning)

Learning -Teaching Strategies:
Group discussions, group work, problem solving, collage activities, PowerPoint Presentations, projects, fun language games, role play, Internet research, competitions, project-based learning.

Learning outcomes:
Upon successful completion of the course, the students should be able to do the following:

1.Reading/writing part: Students will comprehend and produce short pieces of writing (short stories, essays, poetry, articles) pertaining to events common to their age.

• Read/write independently and make choices about what they want to read/write about
• Employ creativity and critical thought using various tasks in English.
• Seek out and understand new vocabulary independently
• Predict, set own questions, elicit language and ideas from texts
• Write short essays prompted by a brainstorming  or a reading activity

2.Communication part: Students will build listening/speaking skills and pronunciation

• Listen to dialogs/stories/news/movies/clips pertaining to events common to their age.
• Tell stories by interpreting a series of pictures and connecting these pictures in a logical manner.
• Interpret and discuss a role play and create and perform their own role play.
• Distinguish between and produce consonant and vowel sounds through different activities (phonics).
• Practice correct pronunciation of words, word stress, and the most common forms of sentence intonation through listening activities.

3.Other skills:

• Have fun, be imaginative/creative with language,
• Foster a cooperative spirit of learning through class work, team work and pair work to develop collaborative learning,
• Encourage students with different skills and knowledge areas to use them,
• Allow/enable students to take responsibility for language learning,
• Produce a language-related piece of work (Art work / design) to be proud of.

Program completion
Upon successful completion of the program, students will get a certificate attesting to their participation in this 80-hour Summer School Course at SILC/YU.

Course design: Director of Instruction at SILC, Al Yamamah University

Course Instructors:
Rachel Cerbone (Women’s Campus)
Jared Lee Hanson (Men’s Campus)
  
Course Registration: click here
For information:
+966 1 485 8613 (Women’s registration)
+966 1 485 8612 (Men’s registration)
E-Mail: summerenglish@alyamamah.edu.sa