Short-Term Courses Information
The following courses are designed to be taken online while a student is in their home country. These courses are to be taken within four-weeks, with students completing tasks per week. Courses will be delivered through the online learning platforms Canvas and/or Microsoft Teams. Students will be enrolled in the classes and given access to the courses after payment is received. A Certificate of Completion will be given to the student for each course completed with a passing grade of 2.0 or higher. The certificate will include the course title and hours completed.
Below you will find descriptions of each course. Courses cover the five language skills: grammar, reading, writing, listening, and speaking. All courses are taught by qualified E.S.L. instructors from Troy University, located in Troy, Alabama, U.S.A.
Students may take up to four courses at one time. The more courses a student takes, the more significant the discount per course. Note: Groups of 15 or more receive a discount!
Dates for course offerings
- Jan. 15 - Feb. 9, 2024
- March 11 - April 5, 2024
- Aug. 19 - Sept. 13, 2024
- Oct. 14 - Nov. 8, 2024
- Jan. 20 - Feb. 14, 2025
- March 17 - April 11, 2025
- Aug. 18 - Sept. 12, 2025
- Oct. 13 - Nov. 7, 2025
Deadline for registration and payment is two weeks before the course begins
For more information or to register, please contact Lance Noe at lnoe@troy.edu
Courses
Grammar 1 – Low Level
This course will be a fast-paced introduction to English Grammar for Beginners. It will introduce students to English grammar, but it can also be used as a quick refresher course for students who have forgotten some of the basic English skills that they have learned in the past. The subject matter for this course is presented in a variety of ways to meet the needs of students' different learning styles: instructional videos, charts, songs, online software, and practice quizzes, and flashcards with pictures for students with low English vocabulary skills. The class can be taken at your own pace with an exam at the halfway point and at the end. This course is designed for pre-A1 – A2 students.
Grammar 2 – Intermediate
The course is designed to help lower-intermediate and intermediate English language learners expand and sharpen their ability to produce grammatically correct sentences in English. This will be done through various means including online instruction, videos, sentence-building exercises, writing practice, and quizzes. Some of these activities will be conducted orally, but the focus will be on formal written English. This course is designed for B1 – B2 students.
Grammar 3 – Advanced
This course is designed to help intermediate to advanced English language learners expand and sharpen their ability to produce grammatically correct sentences in English. This will be done through various means including online instruction, videos, sentence-building exercises, writing practice, and quizzes. Some of these activities will be conducted orally, but the focus will be on formal written English. This course is designed for B2+ – C2 students.
Writing 1 – Sentences and Paragraphs
This course will enhance students' academic writing by focusing on their sentence-writing and paragraph-writing abilities. Students will learn the rules and structure of simple, compound, and complex sentences and will be able to identify and write each sentence type. Students will also learn paragraph format and structure and will study about descriptive paragraphs. They will learn and follow the writing process in order to write one descriptive paragraph. This course is designed for A1 – B1 students.
Writing 2 – Essays
This course is designed to enhance intermediate to advanced students' ability to construct academic essays in the mode of comparison (1200-1400 word) using brainstorming and outlining and incorporating devices of cohesion such as hook, background information, thesis statements, topic sentences, concluding sentences, and transition sentences. This course is designed for pre A2+ – B2 students.
Writing 3 – Research Papers
This course is designed to enhance advanced students' ability to conduct effective
academic research and to appropriately incorporate this research, using APA style,
into an academic essay
(1500-1700 words) in analysis mode with no plagiarism. This course is designed for
B2+ – C2 students.
Reading Skills 1 – Low Level
This course is designed to improve reading comprehension for students with a beginning level of English. This course is comprised of appropriate texts from a variety of sources. Students will read charts, graphs, and short texts that may include several paragraphs. Students will learn new vocabulary and how to understand new words using context clues, prefixes, and suffixes. Students will also learn pre-reading and reading skills. This course is designed for A1 – B1 students.
Reading Skills 2 - Intermediate
This course will focus on skimming and scanning, main idea and details, and improve reading speed. Throughout the course, students will focus on skills that will improve their ability to read faster and understand more of what they have read. This course is designed for students who need to take an English proficiency test (IELTS/Duolingo), prepare for academic classes, or improve their job skills. This course is designed for B1 – C2 students.
Summarizing/Paraphrasing/Outlining
This course will enhance students' note-taking skills, essay writing, research papers, and comprehension of intermediate texts through outlining, summarizing, and paraphrasing without plagiarism. Students will be introduced to the subtle differences in the three forms of writing and how they are used within the context of an academic and professional setting. All three forms will improve student's comprehension of texts, writing skills, and vocabulary. This course is designed for B1+ – C2 students.
Vocabulary Builder
The course focuses on building a student's knowledge of idioms, collocations (words that always go together), phrasal verbs (Verbs + a preposition), descriptive adjectives, homonyms (Same in spelling/pronunciation - different meaning), homographs (Same spelling - Different pronunciation /meanings), and homophones (Same pronunciation - different meaning /spelling). This course is designed for B1 – C1 students.
English Medley
This course was created to address some of the confusions many ESL students have faced in the classroom or in an English-speaking community. “Medley” means a mixture of things and this class will address such varied areas as telling time, big numbers, family titles, abbreviations, punctuation, bad words, and more. Each subject is made up of a video and a handout, and at the end of each week, there is a small test to assess your knowledge of the information learned during the week. This course is designed for high-intermediate to high-level students. This course is designed for B1 – C2 students.
Pronunciation
This introductory course focuses on the pronunciation of American English. Students will examine vowel sounds, consonant sounds, syllables, and word stress. The goals of the class are to improve both production (speaking) and reception (listening) ability as they pertain to "standard" American English. In addition, students will become familiar with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols and the sounds they represent. This course is designed for A2 – C2 students.
Listening/Speaking like a Native using Connected Speech
This course is designed for students with an intermediate level of English looking to improve their listening and speaking skills through learning the informal language of English. The course is comprised of videos, the use of songs, gap-fill, pair work, listening comprehension activities and speaking practice/presentations and quizzes. This course will enable students to speak more like a native speaker, understand native speakers easier and learn about American culture. Topics taught include Linking & Thought Groups, Vocabulary Deconstruction, Word Formations, and Informal Contractions. This is a four-week course and you will be given a Certificate of Achievement upon completion.
Listening 2
This course is designed for students with an intermediate level of English looking to improve their listening skills. The course will focus on identifying the main ideas and details in a wide variety of topics, listening practice and note-taking strategies, and understanding word stress, inflection, and intonation in level-appropriate academic and real-life speech. This course is designed for B1 – C1 students
Listening 3
This course is designed for students with a high-intermediate/advanced English level looking to improve their listening skills. The course introduces phrasal verbs, idioms, and English for daily life situations, such as visiting a physician, ordering food in a restaurant, or making small talk in social situations. It also covers the more academic skills of identifying the main idea and supporting details on a variety of topics, along with transition words used to signal comparisons, contrasts, causes, and effects. Dictation practice is also included. This course is designed for B2 – C2 students
English Test Prep
This course is designed for students with a high-intermediate/advanced English level. This class is designed to help students prepare for and understand the IELTS and DuoLingo English tests. The class will cover both tests and how to employ strategies to answer test questions successfully. Each week will focus on a different skill (listening, speaking, writing, reading). The course will include practice sessions and feedback. Participants will be asked to record videos of themselves for the speaking sections. Therefore, a webcam, microphone, and good internet are required to participate in the class. This course is designed for B2 – C2 students.
Information provided by Lance Noe
Troy University ESL Director
lnoe@troy.edu
08/25/2021