Required Courses

Each session students will take the following courses: Reading, Academic Writing, Elective, and Listening/Speaking. 

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Reading

The primary goal of MAIA’s Reading classes is to prepare students to be able to read and understand academic texts.

 

Students will develop academic literacy skills through articles, videos, maps and graphs that engage readers with academic content in a variety of genres and formats. Meaningful and authentic content, interactive lessons, and regular assessments will improve students’ reading comprehension, vocabulary, and discussion skills while providing opportunities for critical thinking.

 

Some examples of student objectives for our Reading courses are:

• Infer author’s opinion from the text

• Interpret visual information

• Predict main idea

• Understand the gist by scanning for key details and skimming

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Writing

The primary goal of MAIA’s Academic Writing classes is to prepare students to be able to complete writing assignments required for academic work.

 

Students will develop academic writing skills through clear writing models and varied practice in different genres. Students will be provided with step-by-step writing instruction, from brainstorming and drafting to peer editing and revising, as well as integrated grammar, sentence structure and mechanics lessons.

 

Some examples of student objectives for our Writing courses are:

• Develop a paragraph: topic sentence, supporting sentences, concluding sentence

• Write paragraphs of different genres including descriptive, opinions, reasons and examples

• Support the main idea by giving details

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Listening and Speaking

The primary goal of MAIA’s Listening and Speaking classes is for students to be able to understand academic passages, give presentations and participate in academic discussions.

 

Students will develop academic listening and speaking skills through content, images, and video. Meaningful and authentic content, formal presentations, interactive lessons, and regular assessments will improve students’ communication and presentation skills while providing opportunities for critical thinking.

 

Some examples of student objectives for our Listening and Speaking courses are:

• Listen and take notes

• Listen for intonation

• Give individual and group presentations

• Keep a conversation going using various techniques

Electives

The primary goal of MAIA’s Elective classes is for students to practice and refine their academic language skills in all four areas (Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking) while focusing on learning specific content-area knowledge.

 

These elective courses are constantly evolving based on the interests of our current faculty. Some examples of previously offered electives are Personal Blogging, Photography, Creative Writing, Psychology, American Culture, News Literacy, and many more.

 

Some examples of student objectives for our Elective courses are:

• Make inferences

• Write multi-paragraph pieces using sufficient details to support

• Understand reasons, references, and some figurative language

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Supplementary Courses

These courses are offered after school for students in addition to their regular MAIA classes

University Credit Class
Students may have the opportunity to take a real university credit course offered by one of our university partners on the MAIA campus.  Students are typically eligible to take a credit course when they have reached the advanced intermediate level of proficiency and have demonstrated good academic demeanor such as active class participation, solid organizational skills, strong study habits and other positive academic traits in their MAIA classes.

TOEFL Class

This course is designed to prepare students for the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) test and will cover all four elements for the IBT TOEFL: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) is one of the more stressful challenges that a non-native speaker must overcome during the English language learning

process. It is the requirement for most American universities that you have a certain score in order to be admitted to a university for undergraduate, graduate and certificate programs. It is also required for professional certification in fields such as medicine and law. The purpose of this course is to equip students with academic readiness in all four skills as well as note taking and to familiarize them with the format of the TOEFL test, the question types, and test related strategies. Ongoing practice assessments will form a crucial part of this test, as well as continued self-study on the part of each student in order to reach students’ individual score goals.

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