Focus on Business English
Academia Language School offers the following courses for students who want to focus on building language skills relevant to working in an English-speaking environment:
Comprehensive English: Business English
In this Business English course, students develop reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills as they apply to the world of business. The course helps students improve their ability to interact effectively in English in a wide variety of business settings and to develop communication skills needed to succeed in business.
Specifically, students learn vocabulary and expressions required to communicate in a range of business situations. They learn through analyzing case studies, making presentations, negotiating, and speaking with others remotely over the telephone and through video chat and conference calls.
Upon successful completion of this course, students find that they are able to communicate more fluently and confidently about commonly-discussed topics in business and to interact effectively in a greater variety of social situations.
Comprehensive English: Business Slang
As in the case of the Business English course above, students in this course develop reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills as they apply to the world of business. But whereas the Business English course tends to emphasize formal English usage, the Business Slang course helps students improve their ability to communicate in English in everyday work settings in which informal business language is often used.
In the Business Slang course, students learn vocabulary and expressions required to communicate with business colleagues and peers. Upon successful completion of this course, students find that they are able to communicate informally in ways that reflect honest, down-to-earth thoughts and ideas as typically expressed among peers and close associates.
TOEIC Test Prep
The Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) is an English language test designed specifically to measure the everyday English skills of people working in an international environment. The test is often required by companies whose employees must interact with English speakers. Locally, TOEIC test results are sometimes used in lieu of TOEFL scores for entrance to colleges and universities.
Students in TOEIC Test Prep courses learn helpful strategies for making the best possible scores on the reading and listening sections of the TOEIC test.
Specifically, students learn to: (1) locate information with speed and accuracy by skimming the text for key facts and important information; (2) discriminate between main ideas and other important facts and details; (3) understand vocabulary in context and determine pronoun reference; (4) discern various relationships between ideas (e.g., relationships of contrast, cause-and-effect, agreement and disagreement, or steps in a process); (5) trace the development of ideas throughout a reading passage; and (6) make inferences about an author’s opinion and what is implied in a passage.
Academia Language School is the only official TOEIC testing site in the state of Hawaii, making it easy for its students to prepare for the test and take it in a familiar location.
Work Experience Practicum
Students in the Work Experience Practicum develop their reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills while interning in an English-speaking work environment. Students work for 10 hours each week at their work sites. Once each week, students meet in the classroom with their classmates and their instructor to actively share their experiences about life in an American workplace.
Specifically, students learn: (1) how to write resumes; (2) how to conduct themselves appropriately in job interviews; (3) how to apply this knowledge to the acquisition of a job; and (4) how to use and further develop their reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills through on-the-job work experiences.
Typically, students find non-paid positions in fields that are of specific interest to them. In the past, students have found jobs in such diverse areas as medicine, care for the elderly, animal welfare, and a host of other areas of professional interest.