Seneca striving to meet corporate ESL needs

Published: November 25, 2008 5:17 a.m.

Last modified: November 24, 2008 8:18 p.m.

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Seneca College’s ESL program specializes in the design and delivery of courses tailored to the specific needs of individual corporations. It also provides students with the tools they need to become efficient self-learners.

“This semester we have a couple of new and exciting ESL classes starting in the ESL program,” says Karen Miller, ESL program co-ordinator at Seneca.

Classes include Academic Vocabulary Development and Vocabulary and Idioms, which “helps students develop strategies to recognize, understand and use unfamiliar words and idioms in speaking and writing,” Miller says.

Miller says that Reading Skills is a new course that focuses on teaching reading strategies such as recognizing patterns of organization, contextual clues and word parts. “In addition, we practice skimming, scanning and reading faster,” Miller says.

Being sensitive to the schedule and space concerns of its corporate clients, Seneca ESL courses can be delivered either on the firm’s premises or at any of Seneca’s four campuses.

The ESL program also provides other services such as one-on-one appointments with English tutors. Qualified English tutors give ESL students personalized tips on finding and correcting errors in their own work.

There are also writing and grammar workshops and ESL conversation clubs, which allow students to practise their spoken English at weekly meetings in a relaxed environment.