The Approaching Level (AL) English program of the German International School New York prepares students for our native level English courses. Depending on the students' individual progress, they move into intermediate English courses. This decision is made by the student’s English teacher. The primary focus of the program is the development of all the basics of the English language (grammar and vocabulary) and to prepare the students for the reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills necessary to follow the native level English classes.
The goal for the AL students is to achieve a solid foundation in reading skills. This is achieved by gradually exposing them to more challenging genres, starting with simple dialogues, short texts about every day life, short fiction, songs, poems, and non-fictional texts. Throughout the school year we also compare and contrast American and German holidays. Similar to the native level English classes, AL students reflect upon, make connections among, and respond to texts. They will apply skills such as skimming, scanning, previewing and reviewing text, and take notes to record important information. The texts the students read are taken from the English textbook used in class, from magazines such as Storyworks, National Geographic Kids, and Scholastic News, as well as from easy reader books.
Writing skills are practiced continuously in the AL classes. Students learn to write a variety of texts, such as: personal essay, diary entry, poem, letter, short story, play or dialogue, film or book review, and summary. By writing their own texts, students transfer their vocabulary and grammar skills learned in class to another level. A focus is also put on structuring written texts logically and following guidelines for paragraph writing.
Through reading aloud, class discussions, and presentations of group work and individual projects essential speaking skills are trained constantly throughout the school year. Listening comprehension is practiced by exposure to audio and video material such as audio books, songs, news clips and movies.
- pronouns - s-genitive - simple present, present progressive, going to future - imperative - auxiliaries - adverbials of place and time - questions - negative statements - word order 6th grade: - all tenses - irregular verbs - main and subordinate clauses - relative clauses - if-clauses - adverbs Vocabulary To build a solid vocabulary foundation, students are continuously practicing new words from all texts dealt with in class. The vocabulary lists from the textbook used in AL class are the base on which the teacher adds on necessary additional words.