ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING

Our school has created an incredible immersive learning experience where our Canadian and international students learn side-by-side in the classroom. Studies continue to point out that immersive education is the best way for students to learn a second language.

That said there are always students who need to just a bit of additional support in their learning journey because they are perhaps learning English as a second, third or even fourth language. So to that end we have created our English Language Learning department to help students as quickly as possible grasp the fundamentals of English so that they can best thrive in an immersive school experience.

ENGLISH PROFICIENCY

English is the language of instruction and examination at SJASL, and success in our
academic programs requires a base level of English Language Proficiency (ELP). To help ensure all our students get the most out of our programs, we measure proficiency by grade as follows:

Students who are behind their grade level have access to additional support like our ELA program as well as the EI program.

ENGLISH ACQUISITION

Students who are recommended to English Language Aquisition (ELA) classes will take an English support block in their academic timetable as a replacement for French (since students already have a second language). ELA classes offer 120 hours of shared support per academic year. The teacher to student ratio in these classes is at or below 1:8. English Language Acquisition classes support students for credit-bearing courses and build the knowledge and skills typical for a foundational understanding of a credit-bearing course.

In classes with multi-grade-level students, the teacher will take a theme-based approach to organize the syllabus, enabling the teacher to recycle language throughout the themes and to contextualize language, which will help learners at all levels in the classroom.