General English

General English will help you improve your ability to communicate in English in social and work situations and progress to other ELA courses.
The course focuses on the development of communication skills with a balance of speaking, listening, reading, and writing tasks. You will learn through class activities, individual, pair, and small group work.

General English includes elective classes that allow you to tailor your course to meet your learning goals, as you can choose an elective class to focus on a particular subject or skill. The elective classes are dependent on the level and student demand.

With the New Zealand border open and more and more students able to travel to study in person, ELA will return to delivering General English courses on campus (face-to-face) from 12th September 2022. As a result, our final intake for online General English (for individual students) will be 15th August 2022.

Course Dates

Fixed start dates apply. For course dates and fees please click HERE or for more information please contact us.

Electives
General English includes elective classes that allow you to tailor your course to meet your learning goals, as you can choose an elective class to focus on a particular subject or skill. The elective classes are dependent on the level and student demand. They may include: Communication Skills, Business English and English for IELTS.*

• The English for IELTS elective focuses on language development, with competence in the four key IELTS test areas (writing, speaking, listening, and reading) developed during the course. This elective also builds awareness of the IELTS test format and provides practical exam skills and strategies.

• The Business English elective teaches a range of business communication skills, with a focus on practical language. Every few weeks the Business English class will take part in a project involving real-life business skills such as advertising, marketing, presenting, selling a product and writing a report. 

• The Communication Skills elective focuses on developing functional listening, speaking and writing skills, covering the themes ‘Social and Travel’ and ‘Work and Study’. There are often projects connected to the themes and language from the course books.

*Electives are dependent on student levels and demands. Please contact us for more information. 

Course length
Minimum enrolment of 3 weeks

Class hours per week
20 hours

Hear from one of our General English graduates

Victoria (Chile) completed the General English course and successfully went on to land a role as a teaching technician in the Biological Sciences department at The University of Auckland. 

Students are tested before their course begins to determine their class level. Please note that we only have General English classes at the levels in the table below:

General English Levels

Please note the minimum entry level for GE is Elementary (CEFR level A1, IELTS 3.5 or TOEFL iBT 20)

If you would like to get an idea of what your English level is before you enrol, please click HERE to complete our Online Placement Test.

Please note this is a sample timetable only. All online classes are from 1pm to 5:15pm NZT for all levels.

You will be placed in either the Morning Session or Afternoon Session depending on your level of English. All students receive 20 hours of tuition per week. Students at higher levels of General English have two hours of elective classes per day, while students at lower levels focus on building their key language foundations in the elective class.

Students choose their elective classes upon arrival at the ELA.

Upcoming course dates and fees information can be found HERE.

*Other fees may apply. 2022 fees subject to change. 

• The minimum period required for extension is 4 weeks. Students must inform the Enrolments team of their intention to extend their study a minimum of one week before their extended course of study commences.
• Students must pay the tuition fees for their Study Programme to ELA at least four (4) weeks prior to the commencement of their course, except in the following case: Students from the People’s Republic of China are not permitted to pay the tuition fees before INZ has granted “Student Visa Approval in Principle