Specific information about this course and its requirements can be found below. For more general information about taking Saylor Academy courses, including information about Community and Academic Codes of Conduct, please read the Student Handbook.
Improve your writing accuracy and fluency by developing your English grammar and writing skills and improving your reading and vocabulary.
Developing skills in a second language involves understanding how the language works and taking the time to practice using it. ESL002 encourages you to work with new grammar ideas and word choices and practice using those topics to write about yourself and develop your writing skills.
In Unit 1, you will learn how past and present tenses change the meaning of what you read and write. Unit 2 improves your ability to read actively as you skim, scan, and read intensively. In Unit 3, you will read more to collect new vocabulary and learn strategies to develop it more with synonyms, antonyms, and suffixes. Unit 4 brings these skills together as you write a narrative paragraph about something you learned in the past. By the end of ESL002, you will be able to use different tenses to describe past experiences and explain to a reader how you best learn.
This course includes the following units:
Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:
Throughout this course, you will also see learning outcomes in each unit. You can use those learning outcomes to help organize your studies and gauge your progress.
The primary learning materials for this course are readings, lectures, and videos.
All course materials are free to access and can be found in each unit of the course. Pay close attention to the notes that accompany these course materials, as they will tell you what to focus on in each resource and will help you to understand how the learning materials fit into the course as a whole. You can also see a list of all the learning materials in this course by clicking on Resources in the navigation bar.
Only the final exam is considered when awarding you a grade for this course. In order to pass this course, you will need to earn a 70% or higher on the final exam. Your score on the exam will be calculated as soon as you complete it. If you do not pass the exam on your first try, you may take it again as many times as you want, with a 7-day waiting period between each attempt. Once you have successfully passed the final exam, you will be awarded a free Course Completion Certificate.
There are also end-of-unit assessments in this course. These are designed to help you study and do not factor into your final course grade. You can take these as many times as you want to until you understand the concepts and material covered. You can see all of these assessments by clicking on Quizzes in the course's navigation bar.
ESL002: Intermediate English as a Second Language is a self-paced course, which means that you can decide when you will start and when you will complete the course. There is no instructor or set schedule to follow. We estimate that the "average" student will take 15 hours to complete this course. We recommend that you work through the course at a pace that is comfortable for you and allows you to make regular progress. It's a good idea to also schedule your study time in advance and try as best as you can to stick to that schedule.
Learning new material can be challenging, so we've compiled a few study strategies to help you succeed:
This course is delivered entirely online. You will be required to have access to a computer or web-capable mobile device and have consistent access to the internet to either view or download the necessary course resources and to attempt any auto-graded course assessments and the final exam.
For additional guidance, check out Saylor Academy's FAQ.
This course is entirely free to enroll in and to access. Everything linked in the course, including textbooks, videos, webpages, and activities, are all available for no charge. This course also contains a free final exam and course completion certificate.