Teachers of beginning ESL focus on basic communication skills, the ability to greet others in English, provide basic personal information, share family information, make requests, and extend invitations.  Students learn to talk about present events, send greetings to others, ask for information about locations, give and receive directions, tell time, do basic food shopping, and talk about simple everyday activities.

In the second half of the course, students are involved in more complex interpersonal exchanges, they will be able to talk about a problem, make a suggestion, make short phone calls, give reminders, talk about past activities, and seek opinions on present day topics.

Students develop the ability to use present tense verbs, use contractions, cardinal and ordinal numbers, pronouns "you" and "I", make negative statements, use "Could I" and "May I", use possessive pronouns, use the simple past tense, make comparisions, and use "will" and "may".