English School, Chiayi

I now teach an English class every Tuesday and Saturday evening and I have taught 2 classes so far. I was pretty nervous going into it because I have never taught before, and if you know me well you know I have never had any desire to teach. BUT...it went fairly well! I mean how hard can it be to teach your own language, right? ;)

I have a helper teacher names Dora who is Taiwanese and speaks very good English, so when I need it, she translates into Mandarin for me. The first night I taught question words: Who, What, When, When, How, Why. And then I taught other ways to start sentences and how to finish them. The students were pretty reluctant to talk last Saturday, but there was a larger group last night, so it went smoother I think. Last night I taught adjectives, what some common ones mean and how to use them in a sentence.

First I do a warm-up game with them. Last week I made a word-search out of their names so they had to introduce themselves and then find each other’s names in the word search. Last night we played a name game where you introduce yourself with an adjective (to go with the lesson), like “Hello, I’m lovable Lauren.”

After the warm up game I teach for a bit and then we play other learning games to get them to interact in English. Last night we had some time at the end of class so we taught them my favorite English karaoke song, “Yesterday” by The Carpenters. EVERYONE here loves KTV (karaoke) and could probably sing for hours and a lot of them…shouldn’t be singing. J haha But although I like to sing I don’t really like to sing KTV, but I sang the song first with Dora so they would see how it went, and it was fun.

Overall, this program has a couple of points that I can turn into prayer points. First, it’s a service to the students to allow them to learn from an English speaker about English. Although I have all different ages come, a lot of them are students in high school and some will be having English interviews soon that they need to feel confident about. Second, we have the classes in the Gospel Center and we hope that the students will feel comfortable in coming there ad will come back, because it is open almost every evening for hang-out time or church or Bible studies. Third, all the people helping me teach are all part of the mission work or born-again Taiwanese. So we hope that the students will somehow see Christ through us and desire to know more about why we do the things we do. On Saturday night we have church shortly after class ends, so we pray that some of the students will want to stay and see the worship.

I have been working with the youth here a lot and today I will go to 2 different schools to visit the students and the other missionaries will be sharing the Gospel in Mandarin. We have the opportunity to go into these schools because if there is a Christian teacher we can hook-up with, the mission can help start Bible clubs and a lot of times this draws non-believer students in to see what it’s about. So pray that the clubs go well today, and pray as my friend Sam gives his testimony today at one of the clubs that the Lord will speak through him.

That’s all for now!

LB

(below is my helper teacher, Dora, and my co-worker, Birgit, after class)