English as a Second LanguageHighlands Educational Literacy Program (HELP)
Highlands Educational Literacy Program helps both adults and children residing in Washington, Smyth, and Russel Counties with lower literacy skills. HELP provides literacy instruction through a variety of programs, including one-on-one tutoring, and the English as a Second Language Program. Opportunities exist both on and off campus. Emory & Henry College, Fall Semester, 2008
As part of my Spanish 351 Advanced Grammar class, I was responsible for participating in Service Learning (One of two Service Learning classes I enrolled in that semester). Every Thursday, my classmates and I volunteered at a local church, which hosted non-English speaking, or English as a Second Language students. While the vast majority of students were native Spanish speakers, occasionally there were students who spoke Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, and various other languages. As a group, my classmates and I constructed lesson plans for that week's class, and decided on what we were going to teach--taking into account what the students performed well from the last session, and what we felt they needed further reinforcement on (For example, vocabulary, or telling/counting time, or describing the weather accurately). We would often devise activities (Such as matching exercises, using the Spanish word as well as the English word), and then removing the word(s) in the speaker's native language so that they would be familiarizing themselves with the English word. Additionally, we would participate in conversational role play to familiarize ESL students with patterns of speech/holding a conversation. We also had to account for non-Spanish speakers who would sporadically attend our classes, coming up with non-Spanish speaking activities to cater to those students/differentiate from our Spanish-to-English concentrated activities. At the end of our last class, students were individually responsible for producing a non-English speaking newspaper for our students to read. Our Spanish students participated in a food-based vocabulary session, and then cooked us a traditional Mexican meal. |
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