English Language

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The English Language Department is for our bilingual and multilingual students at Northcote College. We offer explicit and extensive English language teaching covering all skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing and vocabulary development.

Our aim is to develop our students’ English Language skills so they can both succeed in their other subjects and be able to apply for, and succeed at, New Zealand or other English-language medium universities.

Diagnostic testing on a student’s arrival at Northcote College enables our deans to place a student in an appropriate EL class to develop their language learning.

Year 9 focuses on developing communicative skills to allow social integration within the wider school context. Year 10 offers three different classes: 10ESL which focuses on academic reading and writing, 10ELA which develops interpersonal communication skills and 10ELB which offers a Structured Literacy approach. Students have the opportunity to attempt NCEA L1 credits as part of their learning.

Senior students in Year 11-13 are placed in classes according to their English language level so that they can make optimum progress. There are two streams of classes: EAP (English for Academic Purposes) and ECP (English for Communication Purposes). These streams are intended to be taken concurrently and offer NCEA credits from Level 2 to Level 4, including UE Literacy credits in EAP3.

In addition to these classes we have a specialised EAL (English as Literacy class) which offers an alternate route for International and funded ESOL students to attain the Literacy Corequisite through specific tagged standards.