Unusual Fun Lessons

Language Bridges Program is designed to bridge the communication gap between the migrant workers and locals. Through this program, volunteers like us (students) teach workers english by providing them with english worksheets, communicating with them and using helpful websites or videos. 

Usually, english grammar is taught by giving grammatical rules and the students have to follow them when writing exercises, whereas communicating in English comes by practicing talking. In my lifetime, I experienced different ways of learning english, by taking english subject in schools and by going to English Learning Centers like ELS and British Council, but I honestly didn't learn proper english as much as I learned through watching movies and reading articles. 

What we students did to change the weekly routine in teaching english, we showed the workers a movie about a woman who was struggling with her life because she didn't know the english language, but she did not give up and she was able to learn good english in the end. The movie's audio and subtitle were both in English, which helps the student workers to link what they hear with what they read. After viewing the movie, the student workers wrote essays describing what they have watched and highlighted what the have liked the most in the movie. This movie might act as inspiration for them to continue on trying to learn good english, they also were able to develop reading and writing skills when it came to writing their essays. Here is a photo from that day.

Another lesson was all about vocabulary and games, the workers need to learn new vocabulary, one of the games played was scrabble-like game. The workers had some sort of competition, we wrote the scrabble board on the white board and gave them few minutes to find as much words as they can. And then each one shared the words they found, hence, they were able to grasp new vocabulary. Here's a photo illustrating the board game.

It feels really good sharing the knowledge you have with people who don't have the resources to learn and be more successful in their life. Language Bridges Program gave them the opportunity to learn, meet new people and have fun. It also gave us the opportunity to teach, work as a team and communicate with new people.