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ESL Department

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As a part of the Language Arts Division, the Cypress College ESL Department offers a sequence of credit courses that prepares multilingual learners of English for success in their college courses across the campus. The core courses are academically rigorous and academically-oriented in order to prepare students for ESL 110 C, our transfer-level composition course equivalent to English C1000, degrees, transfer, certificate programs, and other academic goals.

Our ESL courses help you transfer!

All courses in the ESL sequence have some form of transferability to the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems:  

  • ESL 110 C, the highest-level ESL course, is a transfer-level composition course that fulfills Written Communication transfer and degree requirements for the UC, CSU, and Cypress College. It is fully equivalent to ENG C1000. ESL 110 C fulfills CalGETC and the Cypress College Native degree A1 requirements.  
  • ESL 109 C and ESL 108 C fulfill CalGETC and Cypress College Native C2 degree Humanities requirement.  
  • ESL 107 C, ESL 106 C, and ESL 105 C all have CSU elective transferability.  
  • For more information, visit the General Education (GE) page.  

New ESL Placement Process

Cypress College uses a placement process known as ESL Guided Placement. Multilingual learners of English are invited to participate in this new process.. For more on this, visit our ESL Guided Placement page.

If you are interested in taking classes at Cypress College but want more information, please check out our FAQ page. You can also email esl@cypresscollege.edu. We look forward to working with you! 

If you experience any problems registering for an ESL course, let us know and we will help you through the process! Email esl@cypresscollege.edu.

What do our students think about Cypress ESL?

We think our students are amazing and have accomplished such great things, but you may want to hear what they have to say about Cypress! You can meet some of them by clicking on the ESL Student Testimonials button below.

ESL Student Testimonials

You can also read about students who started in the Cypress College ESL program and have gone on to achieve great things!:  

Scholarships

The Cypress College ESL Department has two scholarships for ESL students.

The Jewel Keusder ESL Scholarship

The Jewel Keusder Memorial ESL Scholarship was founded in 1994 in tribute to the significant contribution made to the ESL Department by Jewel Keusder, a Reading and ESL instructor at Cypress College from 1976 to 1994. The first scholarship was awarded in the spring of 1995. It is administered by the California Building Industry Foundation, a philanthropic organization of which Mrs. Keusder was a part.

Jewel Keusder, after seeing that the needs of multilingual learners of English were not being met by the curriculum in place at the time, developed the ESL program at the college. Since then, the program has grown in the variety of course offerings as well as the number of multilingual learners of English enrolled in classes that appropriately address their English development needs.

The scholarship is awarded once a year during the spring semester to students in the ESL program who have demonstrated excellence in their completion of advanced ESL courses as well as other courses on campus.

Previous Recipients of the Jewel Keusder ESL Scholarship

  • 2024-2025 – Thi Ngoc Tu Doan and Ereen Abdel Malak 
  • 2023-2024 – Yue (Stephen) Zhao, Ola Alqudah
  • 2022-2023 – Thanusri Arandara
  • 2021-2022 – Jinwook Hong and Phuong Nghi Ly
  • 2020-2021 – Leticia Diaz Munoz, Safwan Mansuri, Umanga Agustinu Paris Kankanamal 
  • 2019-2020 – Farid Gerges, Minh Pham, Yuehan Sun
  • 2018-2019 – Crystal Carbajal
  • 2017-2018 – Anh Nguyen, Huong Nguyen, Huiyong Wu
  • 2016-2017 – Ngoc Ngo
  • 2015-2016 – Somang “Iosef” Sung
  • 2014-2015 – Mr. Phong Le & Mr. Thuan “Chelsun” Tran
  • 2013-2014 – Ms. Ngoc Do & Ms. Ngoc Nguyen
  • 2012-2013 – Mr. Phuong Austin Nguyen
  • 2011-2012 – Ms. Sunmi Lee
  • 2010-2011 – Ms. Nicole Carlos & Ms. Chia-Lung Wu
  • 2009-2010 – Ms. Huda Labanieh, Ms. Ying-Wei Lin, & Ms. Thuy Anh Nguyen
  • 2008-2009 – Ms. Dung Thai
  • 2007-2008 – Ms. Dana Dees, Ms. Carmen Fodoreanu, & Mr. Joshua Obidah
  • 2006-2007 – Ms. Shu Chen, Ms. Angelica Rojo, & Ms. Da Thoa Truong
  • 2005-2006 – Ms. Bixia Loi & Mr. Naydn Kim
  • 2004-2005 – Mr. Jiang Bian, Ms. Nancy Hoang, & Ms. Lesly Perez
  • 2003-2004 – Ms. Carolina Narajano & Ms. Siranya Stamm
  • 2001-2002 – Ms. Mei Ling Hsu
  • 2000-2001 – Ms. Minoo Amani & Ms. Maria Karol Manaloto
  • 1999-2000 – Ms. Lee Fizer & Ms. Trinh (Annie) Ha
  • 1998-1999 – Ms. Juliana Stingaciu
  • 1997-1998 – Mr. Phong Nguyen & Ms. Emilia Prado
  • 1996-1997 – Ms. Najwa Abouziki & Ms. Gloria Camacho
  • 1995-1996 – Ms. Namyoung Park
  • 1994-1995 – Ms. Sandra Baghdanous & Ms. Thuy Ton

Qualifications

To qualify for the scholarship, a student must meet the following criteria:

  • The student must be currently enrolled in ESL 109 or ESL 110.
  • The student must have successfully completed at least one ESL core course at Cypress College.
  • The student must continue his/her education at Cypress College or at another U.S. college/university.

The procedures for application are as follows:

  1. Complete an application (available on the Foundation page).
  2. Complete an academic essay on the assigned topic.
  3. Ask two faculty members to complete the recommendation forms. One should be a current ESL instructor and the other a Cypress College instructor in a different department.

The ESL Department Buen Cypress Scholarship

The ESL Department Scholarship was founded in spring 2015 by ESL faculty wanting to recognize the hard work and persistence of students in the ESL program and to ensure the continued education of ESL students at Cypress College.

Previous Recipients:

  • 2024-2025 – KKoch Nim(Helena) Jang and Nhi Y (Jasmine) Tran 
  • 2023-2024 – Ereen Abdel Malak, Huu Chi Dat Nguyen, Olha Srebniak, Jeongbin Park, Yuxi Liu
  • 2022-2023 – Dae Suk (Stella) Oh and Seonung (Josh) Jung
  • 2021-2022 – Husna Azizi and Hoang Nguyen
  • 2020-2021 – Thuy Thuy Anh Nguyen, Dung Le
  • 2019-2020 – Kexin Gao, Eman Omar, Yuki Ono, Leticia Diaz Muñoz, Tuyen Cao, Semhar Weldegaber
  • 2018-2019 – Nha Tran
  • 2016-2017 – Jing Lee

Read about past recipients of ESL scholarships:

Qualifications:

To qualify for the scholarship, a student must meet the following criteria: 

  • The student must be currently enrolled in ESL  106, 107, or 108. 
  • The student must have successfully completed at least one ESL core course at Cypress College.
  • The student must continue his/her education at Cypress College or at another U.S. college/university.  

The procedures for application are as follows:

  1. Complete an application (available on the Foundation page).
  2. Complete an academic essay on the assigned topic.
  3. Ask two faculty members to complete the recommendation forms. One should be a current ESL instructor and the other a Cypress College instructor in a different department.
ESL FAQs
Understanding ESL Certificates