ESL (English as a Second Language) Program

Welland Heritage Council offers an excellent ESL program for newcomers to Canada. Classes run every day from 9am to 3pm with one hour lunch break.

The classes are carefully divided into proficiency levels that cover Canadian Language Benchmarks 1 to 6, reflecting our recognition that newcomers are unique individuals who come to us with diverse backgrounds and needs.

Placement Process for ESL Classes

When new students apply to study ESL at the Welland Heritage Council, we use a placement test process that has been compiled especially for our purposes. This test is directly based – like our class divisions and our lesson planning – on the Canadian Language Benchmarks. The result is an efficiently harmonious ESL program to serve our newcomers to Canada. We assess each student in all four skills: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Students are then placed in the class that best suits their English level.

Each term students receive two reports on their performance in class: a midterm progress report and a final progress report. We issue the first report at the mid-point in the term and the other report at the end. This kind of ongoing feedback is very important with adult learners because they tend to be very self-aware, so that they need progress information in order to take charge of their own development.

We offer continuous intake for our ESL classes which means that new students are welcome at any time.

The Welland Heritage Council's ESL program is funded by the District School Board of Niagara.

For students on Ontario Works or Ontario Disability Support Program, we provide childminding services which are funded by the Region of Niagara Community Services.