English Club

Now that we’re fully recovered we’ve begun teaching an English Club primarily for the seniors in high school. This will be an especially good group to be working with because we can help them with their English just as they are applying for scholarships for universities. We have heard of many opportunities for students who can speak English well – many developed, English-speaking countries have generously offered a few full scholarships to Timorese students. We’ve already been able to help one of the students with a scholarship application and she has been recalled for a written test and an interview. Please pray for her and the other students – for many students, academic scholarships are their only means of going to university.

On Wednesday we had our first English Club. We were nervous as to how many students would come because they already had a full day of school and must be very hungry (there is no school lunch here – students get out at 1:30 pm instead and go home to eat), but forty-one students came!!! Obviously it’s the first day and many won’t come everyday, but it was so encouraging. Most of them are coming to practice speaking. They know some English, but no one practices because everyone normally speaks Tetum or Indonesian.

We started with a prayer, and did introductions, showing them a few pictures of us and our families. They really liked the pictures. Then we explained the details of English Club before playing a game. They love games in English because it’s a fun way to practice. We played the ice breaker “You’ve got mail.” They loved it and were laughing so loudly we had to shush them many times as we tricked them into practicing listening and speaking.

Then, since it was the first day we gave them introduction questions to answer in small groups to practice speaking while we did one-on-one interviews to find out everyone’s names, what they wanted most to get out of English Club, and we secretly gauged their level of English so we know what level we should teach at. You can tell it was really exciting : ) We teach one of the university classes too, but this is different because we can just make this fun – no homework, tests, etc.

Things we’re looking forward to:

- Movies!

We will be trying to show a movie every other Friday for the kids. This Friday we showed Finding Nemo and there were forty kids there again! We put on the English subtitles and had a flier prepared in English and Tetum about the plot and characters. These movies will be a good chance to intensely practice listening and speed reading and then we’ll discuss after the movie for comprehension and helping them understand new words. It seems to be going well, but we’ll be looking for ways to improve it as we go.

- Games! Coming up with lots of games to work into the class!

- Field trips!

Whenever we can we will try to organize field trips to go to different NGOs (Non Government Organizations), government buildings, and embassies and get a tour in English and have a discussion. It will be good for the kids to practice, but also will let them know about opportunities in Dili and we hope might help them make some contacts at NGOs that might turn into jobs at some point.

Hope all is well back home!
Rachel and Brendan