Education Unlimited’s English Immersion program welcomes Intermediate to Advanced Intermediate students from around the world who wish to improve their English skills in a fun and supportive atmosphere. Students will experience the beautiful UC Berkeley campus as they live in the UC Berkeley Residence halls and eat their meals in the dining hall. As they are immersed in the heart of this prestigious American university students will interact daily with native speakers as they gain confidence and fluency in English.

CURRICULUM & INSTRUCTIONAL ENVIRONMENT

Our curriculum is designed around the assumption that language has to be explicitly taught and students must be given authentic opportunities to practice listening, speaking, reading and writing.  EU also believes that language learning must be rooted in a social and cultural context and cannot be developed by sitting in a classroom or just working in a workbook. Lastly our curriculum is intended to be fun and engaging so that learners get outside of their comfort zone, laugh, and take risks to push their language acquisition to the next level.

With these beliefs in mind, each day students will have a daily theme with topics such as sports, music, art, and history. Through reading, writing, listening and speaking activities, mornings are spent learning vocabulary and grammar that connect to the daily theme. In the afternoon, students put their skills to the test by going on group excursions with team and individual challenges. Our unique “English Exploration” challenges are a fun way for students to explore the Bay Area while intentionally building their English skills. Challenge examples may include asking a native English speaker for directions, taking a walking tour of Berkeley’s colorful and historic murals while using new language to describe each mural in detail, visiting nature areas and practicing vocabulary to discuss local flora and fauna. Through authentic opportunities,  students use their skills “live” in a social context.

HIGHLIGHTS & DELIVERABLES

• Thematically organized instruction to develop grammar and vocabulary

• Daily supervised excursions in the San Francisco Bay Area with an academic language focus

• Ongoing opportunities to engage with native speakers to practice listening and speaking skills

SPECIFIC SKILL DEVELOPMENT

Although campers are expected to be intermediate in their language abilities, we know that they may arrive at camp with different skills or past experiences.  The instructor will administer a brief assessment to understand the unique needs of each student and modify the core curriculum as needed throughout the program.  Students will spend time each day developing English across the four domains of language development; reading, writing, listening and speaking. Depending on the needs of the group this will include increasing knowledge of verb forms and other grammatical structures,  as well as vocabulary development and understanding use of idiomatic expressions. Students will practice language in formal and informal activities and written projects. Ultimately we strive to have each student improve from their present level of ability to become more confident, more fluent, and with a clearer vision of what their their next steps are in their English journey.  

GRADE LEVEL SPECIFICS

Middle School: Middle schoolers will have time to build confidence and foundational skills during their time together. Instructors will spend time helping students to set language goals for themselves as learners. In addition, instructors will help students reflect on the three “C’s” of language learning; collaboration, communication and confidence.  They will engage in similar excursions and daily challenges as the high schoolers with increased team building time, and extended opportunities to practice language within the classroom community. In addition our middle schoolers have constant supervision during non-instructional time.

High School: High schoolers will be challenged to take their existing English skills to the next level by speaking English the entire time they are at camp.  Like our younger students, high school students will set language goals for themselves, but they will be expected to fully immerse themselves into extended excursions and daily language challenges to reach these goals both in and outside of the classroom time.  In addition our high schoolers will have daily writing expectations in which they will use the skills they are learning to write informally and formally to instructor provided prompts as they prepare to use English in more academic settings.