Improve Essential English Skills

Overview: Linda Christas English Mentoring Program

Purpose: The purpose of this overview is to provide parents, students and teachers with a general description of the Linda Christas English Mentoring Program, and to demonstrate how this program can and will assist students in middle school and high school to more fully understand and use Standard English.

Discussion: During the 1930's, 1940's and 1950's, a cadre of gifted public school teachers offered a firm structural base in Standard English to their classroom students.

Phonics, sentence diagramming, vocabulary development, and syntax analyses were all routinely part of the oftentimes-difficult journey of students toward competent use of Standard English.

In addition, the student bodies involved during that period were by and large cooperative in terms of expending the energy necessary to master a possibly tedious subject.

During the 1960's and beyond, the emphasis in many public school English classrooms began to move toward individual language creativity and cultural enlightenment rather than on the periodically less entertaining task of mastering vocabulary, sentence structure, etc. Further, students in the 1960's and beyond were and are less cooperative with a process if deemed dry or lacking native excitement.

As a result, there is a feeling today by many English teachers at the middle school or high school level that, if it doesn't entertain, the students may disengage themselves from the learning process.

Approach: Linda Christas, taking all of the factors above into consideration, has developed what we believe to be a system of learning which combines all the elements necessary to engage the modern student in the learning of Standard English.

By using a combination of high quality as well as entertaining literature as a foundation, our teachers are able to greatly enhance the student's command of Standard English vocabulary and grammar, as well as fostering competence in reading, speaking and writing.

In addition, our credentialed English teachers have the luxury of working one on one with students, thereby having the ability to tailor each course to the specific level of the student involved.

The Linda Christas English Mentoring Program is composed of the distinct levels described below. All volumes assigned to a specific level have been measured in terms of their appropriateness to the developmental progress of the student at the time of enrollment.

The Linda Christas English Mentoring Program consists of individually tailored online lessons, presented at the student's pace.

Classroom School Teacher/Linda Christas Interface: Whether the student has achieved an advanced level of English mastery or is an English as Second Language learner, the Linda Christas programs are designed to complement, not compete with, English courses being offered in middle schools and high schools in the United States.

Goal: The goal of the Linda Christas English Mentoring Program is to give all our middle school and high school students the opportunity to earn a high degree of competence in Standard English reading, speaking and writing.

Whether the student is college bound, business bound, plans to serve in the military OR ALL THREE, such a command of Standard English will place the student in a position to excel.

So much of how we measure promote-ability in our society has to do with the competence displayed by the individual in terms of understanding and participating well in Standard English reading, speaking and writing activities. This being the case, it becomes increasingly important that the student be encouraged to take advantage of Standard English programs being offered both inside and outside the classroom.

President Bush has asked all public school districts to seek out and use innovative approaches to educating our children.

It is our hope that the President, Congress, school administrators, teachers and Linda Christas can work together toward being able to someday say that NO CHILD IS BEING LEFT BEHIND.

The program is composed of three general 'levels' and seventeen 'areas of specialization', which the Linda Christas teacher will organically blend for the individial.

Level One: Beginning English Mentoring Curriculum Guideline

Through the medium of short stories and novelettes, the student is introduced to the following English proficiencies:

1) Recognition of the noun, the pronoun, the adjective, the verb, the adverb, the preposition, the conjunction, and the interjection;

2) Recognition of the parts of a sentence, including recognition of the subject and predicate, compound subjects and verbs, direct and indirect objects, objective complements, predicate nominatives, predicated adjectives, as well as recognition of sentence patterns;

3) Recognition and study of the kinds of phrases and their functions, including the prepositional phrase, verbal phrase, the participial phrase, the gerund phrase, and the infinitive phrase;

4) Recognition and study of the kinds of clauses, including the independent clause, the subordinate clause, the adjectival clause, the noun clause, the adverb clause, and the elliptical clause.

Level Two: Intermediate English Mentoring Curriculum Guideline

Through the medium of novelettes and novels, the student is introduced to the following English proficiencies:

1) Identification of levels of usage such as standard and substandard English, formal and informal English;

2) Identification of levels of usage as they apply to agreement of subject and verb, intervening phrases, indefinite pronouns as subjects, and agreement of pronoun and antecedent;

3) Identification proper usage of pronouns;

4) Identification of the correct form and use of verbs, including the kinds of verbs, i.e. regular and irregular verbs, verb tenses, active and passive verbs;

5) Identification of the correct use of modifiers, including adjective and adverb forms, comparative and superlative forms, irregular comparison, use of comparatives and superlatives and double comparisons.

Level Three: Advanced English Mentoring Curriculum Guideline

Through the medium of essays, newspaper articles, novelettes and novels, the student is introduced to the following English proficiencies:

1) Identification of sentence fragments and run-on sentences;

2) Identification of coordination and subordination as that applies to the relationship of ideas;

3) Identification of ambiguous references, general references, weak references, and indefinite use of pronouns;

4) Identification of misplaced modifiers, dangling modifiers and two-way modifiers;

5) Identification of parallel structure including the kinds of parallel structure, and completed parallelism;

6) Identification of superfluous words and unnecessary repetition.

English Mentoring - Offered Areas of Specialization

Area One: Rudimentary vocabulary building, spelling, and pronunciation, English Grammar I: Rudimentary parts of speech, English punctuation.

Area Two: Vocabulary building, spelling, pronunciation. New area: English Grammar II: Basic sentence building in English.

Area Three: Vocabulary building, pronunciation, spelling. New Area: English Grammar III: Sentence diagramming and advanced sentence building in English.

Area Four: Vocabulary building, pronunciation, spelling, Standard English grammar, sentence structure. New Area: Study of rudimentary paragraph development in English.

Area Five: Vocabulary building, pronunciation, spelling, Standard English grammar, sentence structure, paragraph development. New Area: Study of elements of nuance in English.

Area Six: Vocabulary building, pronunciation, spelling, English grammar, sentence structure, paragraph development, elements of nuance in English. New Area: Study of rudimentary concepts of essay structure in English.

Area Seven: Vocabulary building, pronunciation, spelling, Standard English grammar, sentence structure, paragraph development, elements of nuance in English, essay structure. New Area: Study of rudimentary concepts of writing style in English.

Area Eight: Vocabulary building, pronunciation, spelling, standard English grammar, study of sentence structure, paragraph development, elements of nuance in English, essay concepts, concepts of writing style. New Area: Rudimentary survey of English genres.

Area Nine: Vocabulary building, pronunciation, spelling, standard English grammar, sentence structure, paragraph development, elements of nuance in English, essay concepts, concepts of writing style, survey of English genres. New Area: Concentrated study of the novel in English.

Area Ten: Vocabulary building, pronunciation, spelling, standard English grammar, sentence structure, paragraph development, elements of nuance in English, essay concepts, concepts of writing style, survey of English genres, the novel in English. New Area: Concentrated study of drama in English.

Area Eleven: Vocabulary building, pronunciation, spelling, standard English grammar, sentence structure, paragraph development, elements of nuance in English, essay concepts, concepts of writing style, survey of English genres, the novel in English, drama in English. New Area: Concentrated study of poetry in English.

Area Twelve: Vocabulary building, pronunciation, spelling, standard English grammar, sentence structure, paragraph development, elements of nuance in English, essay concepts, concepts of writing style, survey of English genres, the novel in English, drama in English, poetry in English. New Area: Concentrated study comparing standard British and American English literary works.>

Area Thirteen: Vocabulary building, pronunciation, spelling, standard English grammar sentence structure, paragraph development, elements of nuance in English, essay concepts, concepts of writing style, survey of English genres, the novel in English, drama in English, poetry in English. New Area: Concentrated study of English as it is used in commerce.

Area Fourteen: Vocabulary building, pronunciation, spelling, standard English grammar, sentence structure, paragraph development, elements of nuance in English, essay concepts, concepts of writing style, survey of English genres, the novel in English, drama in English, poetry in English. New Area: Concentrated study of English as it is used in journalism.

Area Fifteen: Vocabulary building, pronunciation, spelling, standard English grammar, sentence structure, paragraph development, elements of nuance in English, essay concepts, concepts of writing style, survey of English genres, the novel in English, drama in English, poetry in English. New Areas: Oratorical Interpretation in English, Dramatic Interpretation in English, Debate in English.

Area Sixteen: Vocabulary building, pronunciation, spelling, standard English grammar, sentence structure, paragraph development, elements of nuance in English, essay concepts, concepts of writing style, survey of English genres, the novel in English, drama in English, poetry in English. New Area: Creative Writing in English: Drama, Novel, Poetry.

Area Seventeen: Vocabulary building, pronunciation, spelling, standard English grammar, sentence structure, paragraph development, elements of nuance in English, essay concepts, concepts of writing style, survey of English genres, study of the novel in English, drama in English, poetry in English. New Area: Creative writing in English: Speech Writing.

Parent/Student Guidelines for Best Results

1) It is important for a parent or guardian to monitor the participation level of the student. (Copies of all session exchanges will be sent to the parent's or guardian's e-mail address if such an address is provided.)

2) The student must commit to full and frequent contact with his/her Linda Christas instructor BEFORE parents or guardians should consider enrolling the student in the Linda Christas English Mentoring Program.

3) The Linda Christas English Mentoring Program is composed of three levels. Each level is one calendar year in duration. Each level of instruction may be purchased separately.

4) The student will be guided through the English Mentoring Program by a State credentialed English Instructor.

5) Parents and guardians are asked to assist and encourage their student over the course of the English Mentoring Program. Such positive reinforcement has proven to be essential for the best result.

6) Students are free to ask their instructor for clarification of an assignment at any time.

7) A Linda Christas certificate of completion will be issued to the student at the end of each year's program.

8) The English Skills Program is not to be considered an English as Second Language (ESL) curriculum, but rather a method of guiding the student through the various levels of English mastery. If an ESL course is being taken concurrently with the Linda Christas English Mentoring Program, the Linda Christas program should be viewed as a complement to the ESL instruction.

9) Linda Christas instructors look forward to assisting students to achieve an excellent level of command of English through a study of the basic structures of this important living language.

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