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Contact: Ingrid C. Holm, Acting Director/Senior Lecturer II, holm@acad.umass.edu  or Margaret Allard, Senior Lecturer, mmallard@educ.umass.edu

Office: 308 Bartlett Hall  Phone: (413) 545-4210
Lecturers Allard, Holm.

The English as a Second Language (ESL) Program has been redesigned with the support of the Center for Teaching and Faculty Development to offer specialized English for Academic Purposes courses for credit. In support of University internationalization, the program mission is to help post-admissions international undergraduate and graduate non-native speakers of English with TOEFL university entry scores of 80-120 master the formal conventions of academic English reguired for Gen Ed courses, undergraduate and graduate courses in the academic disciplines as well as graduate writing for doctoral dissertations, master's theses, and research publications. As defined by the American Council of Foreign Language Teaching and the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, the goal is for students to attain an expert level of second-language fluency and accuracy in academic written and spoken English.  Undergraduate and graduate students may enroll in the same courses. The courses are of six types: Academic Writing, including advanced essay composition and graduate research English writing; Academic/Professional Speaking; Academic/Professional Grammar and Vocabulary; English for Specific Purposes, including English for Medical and Health Professionals; International Teaching Assistants; and a First-Yeat Seminar on Cross-cultural Communication. Informed by research on Second-Language Acquisition, Applied Linguistics, Second-Language Writing, Second-Language Speaking, Corpus Linguistics, Composition and Rhetoric, and Intercultural Studies, the courses are taught by experienced second language specialists holding graduate degrees in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. Currently enrolled full-time undergraduate, graduate, Five College, and international exchange students are eligible to register for courses offered during the fall and spring semesters. 

For more information about the program or its courses, call the ESL Program, visit www.umass.edu/esl, or contact one of the instructors via email.