UMass Boston

ELP Curriculum

• Sample Schedule

• Curriculum Summary

Pedagogy

The contribution of multilingual students to UMass Boston is one of our greatest strengths as a university. We believe that multilingual students’ flexibility with language and intercultural sophistication in addition to their educational and professional experience give them a unique ability to address the demands of university study. For these reasons, our language curriculum is informed by asset-based practices, including Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP), which aims to center and draw from students’ lived experiences and cultural and linguistic wealth. Students come to our program from all over the world and the local community, and we believe that through the amplification of their individual and collective experiences, the language curriculum becomes far more relevant and effective.

Content

The focus of the program is on building and strengthening English language skills, including speaking, listening, reading, writing, and syntax. While every course addresses these skills in an integrated fashion, each one has a particular focus. Students improve their skills while working in authentic academic contexts to encounter a wide variety of challenging and engaging content that is chosen by their instructors.

Levels

The ELP curriculum is structured according to the competencies provided by the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) to target English language skills for multilingual learners from the A2 through C1 levels of proficiency. Students may be initially placed anywhere in the sequence, depending on their English proficiency, and the number of semesters spent in the ELP will vary by student.

Cohort Model and Tutoring

Students are placed into cohorts with classmates of proximate but not identical proficiency levels. The cohorts serve as learning communities that study and move together across the curriculum. Each cohort is assigned to an embedded tutor who attends weekly classes with the group and works with students individually outside of class. Supplemental Instruction (SI) is also available for each cohort to give students extra support with their reading and writing.

Sequence

Our program is built on a six-semester sequence that promotes students through the pathway into more and more linguistically demanding coursework and to prepare them for undergraduate and graduate courses. Every semester in the sequence includes nine hours per week of Critical Reading & Writing and four hours of Special Topics, which is a seminar-style speaking and listening course. Early in the sequence, students also take Grammar & Syntax for six weekly hours, and then more advanced courses are devoted to Research Skills.