The Laurier and Haitian university students who are participating in the ESL program are engaging in authentic conversations. The discussions are based on questions and answers that the students have for each other. The participants come together each day with no agenda except to have two hours of conversational language practice. The dialogue has been incredibly deep and rich.
An example of such a dialogue was one on the relationship of love and money. A male student asked the question and everyone jumped into the discussion. A female student immediately took the position that you cannot have love without money. This was counter-argued by a male student who said, of course you could have love without money, after all that is the environment in which we are born.
And so the debate continued until the young woman turned to me and said, "So what do you think Dr. Steve?"
I thought to myself, This could be tricky.
So I proceeded to do what every good teacher does when confronted with a tough question: I paused, looked puzzled, and said, "Tell me more about why you think you are right."
They all had a good laugh and moved on to the next topic.
This particular conversation made me realize that the conversational English class is not so much about learning English but learning about each other. That is far more valuable than learning a language.
Some pictures from today:
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| Our Canadian ELI participants |
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| Rob McBride, from Apple, has been a long-term supporter of ELI |
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| Jonathon, one of our Canadian science instructors |
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| Parachute games at the camp with the school in the background |
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| Cassie, one of our camp leaders, with one of our participants |
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| Learning about oxygen in our STEAM camp |
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| Vanessa and Tanis leading our English language block |
1 comment:
Great to see the pics and everyone in action.
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