Summer courses for Juniors

• Lessons consist of project work on areas related to Ireland, culture, history, popular interest.
• Lessons incorporate work on the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing, as well as essential language skills of grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation.
• Project work is linked to student excursions and visits

The IH Galway academic programme is designed to meet the needs and interests of a group of teenage students. The programme has been designed to replace the traditional coursebook as we believe that it must reflect our students’ needs and interests, and these needs cannot be met by purely using a course book, which is designed for a very generic context. The IH Galway Summer English Programme motivates and challenges our students as it is based on authentic and personalised materials, which are selected with our students’ interests and needs in mind. As the programme is linked to our activities and visits, it also provides our students with the opportunity to find out some information about Galway and Ireland, and thus motivate them further. Projects are slightly different for both programmes and are pitched at a higher level for the Pre-University Experience students. They also have a more academic English programme, with an IELTS focus.

The aim of the course is to help our students to develop their knowledge of English, with an emphasis on the skills of listening, reading, speaking and writing, with a focus also on vocabulary development, grammar and pronunciation, as these elements are what students of English need in order to be able to communicate effectively. The course programme includes a series of projects and presentations to help our students develop their language skills. As they are linked to the planned activities and visits, the projects help students focus on the activity/visit with some background knowledge provided in advance. On the activities/visits, they complete some tasks, which are then used in follow up lessons. Projects and presentations are assessed by our tutors and there will be prizes given at the final ceremony for the outstanding ones. These projects and presentations will form part of the students’ portfolio, which they will take home with them following their course.

Our teachers follow the course programme, which has been designed by our own course designers, but they are also free to select other materials which are suitable for the learning context, the English level of the group and the learners’ ages and background. The programme is designed to ensure a balance of skills, as well as some useful lexical input to help students build a useful vocabulary bank of lexis, which they can then use outside the classroom.

All materials are either designed or adapted from other sources, or are authentic materials designed by our course designers. Students will be provided with a portfolio at the beginning of the course where they store all materials. Projects are stored in the portfolio as they are developed, and videos which are produced by the students are stored electronically in the group’s file. Students take their portfolios, with their materials and their projects, home with them following the course, to enable them to refer back to them and continue to develop their English.

The underlying methodology of the course programme is based on Communicative Language Teaching, but teachers are also encouraged to incorporate other methodologies into their lessons, including the Lexical Approach when focusing vocabulary and Task Based Learning when preparing projects. Teachers receive input in helping to maximize the learners’ participation in the lesson and to help increase learning opportunities through the use of pair and group work. Students work together on the projects and this foments the ability to work effectively in a team.

Our students develop essential skills on the course as they prepare and present videos and presentations in their groups for their classmates and teachers. The IT components focused on relate to practical work- and study related skills, social media knowledge and cultural awareness, all the time considering the students’ cultural background. Teachers receive input in helping to maximize the learners’ participation in the lesson and to help increase learning opportunities through the use of pair and group work. Students work together on the projects and this foments the ability to work effectively in a team.

•  Pre-arrival: students will take the IH placement test. Each result will be collated based on the Council of Europe Framework of Reference (CEFR). The CEFR level of each student will also include a reference to can-do statements for each skill and globally, in order to help teachers see where the needs are specifically. As part of the placement test, students will also complete a needs analysis.
• During the course: formative assessment will take place daily in the form of recycling of lexis and expressions to help the items become part of the students’ long-term memory.
• During the course: weekly progress tests are set, based on what the students have focused on in their lessons.
• End of course: students are given a final assessment and they receive a final report as well as an end-of-course certificate.

• Projects: content, accuracy and quality.
• Presentations: content, accuracy and delivery.
• Portfolios.
• Participation in class.
• Teamwork.
• Interest in and ability to engage with students from other countries to learn about other cultures and customs and to tell others about their culture and customs.
• The use of English only at all times during the programme.

IH Galway teachers all hold degrees and a CELTA, a Degree level English Language Teaching qualification, as a minimum requirement, and many of our teachers hold a DELTA, a Master’s level English Language Teaching qualification. IH Galway is an Authorised University of Cambridge Teacher Training Centre so we train our own teachers. We offer regular professional development for our teaching staff, which includes developmental observations, seminars, participation in, and presentations in, academic conferences, and further specialization courses. All our teachers have received training in delivery of our Junior Summer Programmes and they are all police-vetted.