Course Curriculum

Intensive Summer Course - July 7 to July 31, 2025

Welcome to Sesame Seed Learning! At Sesame Seed Learning, we aim to help you achieve your English speaking goals by providing you with live, interactive English training.

The Intensive Summer Course will focus on improving your pronunciation and knowledge of the most common words and phrases used in English, particularly in the US. Two age-based sections are provided: one for youth ages 13-17 and the other designed particularly for University students (though it is open enrollment for all adults). This course aims to help you achieve a more clear American English pronunciation so that you will be better understood by Americans. The course will be taught by US citizens who will provide helpful identification of sounds/words/phrases which may need your targeted attention to improve, followed by friendly and encouraging practice. Of note, accent reduction/elimination is not necessarily a goal of this course, but being more clearly understood is. Interactions with others will improve greatly once a level of being clearly understood is achieved. Whatever level you are at, we hope this course will help your spoken English be more clearly understood by native speakers.

Methodology:

The Intensive Summer Course will provide helpful training during each class period along with daily assignments meant to help you greatly improve your spoken English. By having a more intense daily focus on key sounds, words, and phrases, students are expected to greatly improve their pronunciation. Vocabulary and phrase lists will be assessed for a student’s initial and final pronunciation level - providing a measurable assessment of progress. Daily attendance is expected for this intensive course (missing class for emergencies is obviously understood). While intense, this course is still meant to be fun and provide friendly encouragement in the mastery of spoken English.

Typical Class Outline:

Each class will be held for 50 minutes. The beginning of each class will typically include an enlightening 5-minute cultural exploration - you won’t want to be late! A typical class may consist of the following:

  • Cultural Exploration (5 minutes)

  • Review of Pronunciation of Vocabulary and Phrases from Homework Assignment (15 minutes)

  • Introduction of New Vocabulary and Phrases for Pronunciation Work (10 minutes)

  • Group Breakouts/Individual Assessments with Instructor (15 minutes)

  • Wrap-up (5 minutes)

Requirements:

Classes will be taught live via Zoom in English. Students must have a stable internet connection and be capable of handling a Zoom connection. For this Intensive Summer Course, University students and adults must have an intermediate or advanced knowledge of English. Youth may be at an upper-level beginning level. Audio must be utilized throughout the class period. At times, students may need to pause their video, which is acceptable. It is understood that at times circumstances may cause students to arrive late to class - you are always welcome to join, but you will want to be on time as often as you can to not miss the beginning cultural exploration portion. Additional requirements are found in the Student Agreement, Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions pages.

Additional Outside Classroom Work:

For the Intensive Summer Course, students will receive daily assignments that are expected to be worked on outside of the class periods. This additional work is crucial in helping students continue their progress, which will be briefly assessed in the subsequent class period. Some sounds/phrases are more difficult to learn, so students should never feel bad if it is taking them longer to achieve mastery of a given word or phrase, and these friendly assessments are provided only to help the student know when they have reached a clear level of understanding. There is power in friendly encouragement coupled with the desire to improve, which is the goal of all of our efforts and assignments, both inside and outside the classroom. Note that no “grade” is given for the level of improvement or number of words/phrases reaching the “clearly understood” designation, - only your personal satisfaction for the improvement you achieve.

Certificate of Completion:

Those attending 80% or more of the classes for this course will receive a certificate of completion, and the equivalent of 8-weeks of traditional classes completed (twice as many since this intensive course meets 4 times per week). Once 32 weeks of classes have been earned, a 1-year Diploma Certificate will also be awarded.

Instructional Delivery:

It is expected that most of the classes will be delivered live via Zoom by the assigned Instructor. However, there may be occasional classes that must be taught by a substitute Instructor or a particular class may be canceled completely or a particular class will be replaced by another class offered at the same time but on a different day (e.g. Saturday). This is expected to happen rarely if ever, but Sesame Seed Learning, LLC reserves the right to make such changes. Students will be reimbursed for the cost of a single class in the case that a single class is ever completely canceled or that the modified class day can not be attended by the student.