SCRIPT: “Intensive English Program at AUC”

Jasmin Hassan
March 2019

This audio interview conducted with Dr. Ehab El Shemy, an instructor of IEP at AUC. El Shemy
illustrates the challenging sectors that students face which causes them to repeat the course. He
explains the grading rubric of both proficiency levels of IEP which are 0101 and 0102.

Dr. Ehab El Shemy is a former instructor at the Intensive English Program (IEP) and a current

instructor at the English Language Institute (ELI) at AUC. El Shemy graduated from AUC in

2014. He worked as a teaching fellow in the IEP department along with his masters for 2 years

then he started working as fulltime instructor in the IEP department, and now he just moved to

the ELI department. El shemy talks about the intensive English program, which is the first level

of English at auc Illustrating its different sectors and grading system

(IE): “For the writing, for the 100 percent of writing. They sit for pre exams. Each have
a different weight like the first one is 15 percent second one is 35 and the last one is 50.
This is how it used to be when I was teaching”(00:14)

So, the percentage grade is not weighted on a single sector; however, it is broken down in order

to focus separately and assess each component on its own and because there are some areas more

challenging than others and because 12% of the students fail to pass this course, the IEP

department at AUC is now using a different grading system in order to be more efficient

(IE): They made the first task with 25 percent and the second one is a reading response
which is also worth 25 percent and the last task is as it is 50 percent. The other 100
percent. This is where it's based on their grade on the oral presentation, multiple choice
reading and vocabulary multiple choice grammar.” (00:24)

This change is because the department believes that one of the reasons why students do not pass

this course is that at the beginning of the semester students are more fresh and more ambitious to
work while by the mid of the semester, they somehow get bored of taking five hours of English

every day. Another reason why students fail to pass this course is that they think that what they

are doing is easy, which is not true, and this is where El Shemy supported the department

(IE): “The students all the things they need is just practice more because I think reading
and listening in particular they're receptive and very very difficult to make
progress.”(00:10)

In most of the cases those are the main reasons why some students repeat the course or fail to

pass it, so besides the efforts of the department and the instructors, students have to figure out

their weak skills and practice in order to overcome the challenging skills. Because practicing is

the key of this course.

Jasmin Khair, A-U-C Radio