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The Icing on the Cake
This article is an excerpt from a mission moment Cynthia Huber shared at Mount Olivet United Methodist Church in February 2023.
Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Korea, and Venezuela. These are the countries represented by the students in the intermediate ESOL class that I help to teach on Monday nights. The learners include a former interpreter for US troops, three sisters in their twenties, and a former college human resources instructor. There is a nurse, construction worker, student, and restaurant worker. One student often brings her ten-year old daughter to class. My students are representative of the many countries and current/former occupations of adult learners participating in English classes sponsored by English as a Second Language and Immigrant Ministries, otherwise known as ESLIM.
The intermediate students cover a wide range of knowledge of English as well as literacy. It is not uncommon for a student to have good command of English verbal skills but be unable to read signs, forms, menus or the like in English, due in part to being only semi-literate in their native language. For example, one student is very engaged and does pretty well speaking English. But he left school at around eight or nine years old, so he struggles with written exercises. In our intermediate class, we focus on practical English language skills so students can communicate at their jobs, in their children's schools, with their doctor, in the grocery, and in other situations. So, for example, tomorrow night will be our third class dealing with food topics. We have covered food-related vocabulary, idioms based on food or cooking, grocery shopping, cooking, and related grammar concepts. Tomorrow, through various exercises and role play, we will cover grammar and talk about eating out at restaurants, ordering food by phone, ordering food from the car at fast food restaurants, and using English language mobile apps for ordering food. These students give up their precious free time two evenings a week to learn English. It is a privilege and blessing for me to work with them and for Mount Olivet to support this ministry.
One of my learners is an older woman from Russia. She told me after class that before starting the class, she thought she knew a lot about English. But she reported that she is learning new words and concepts each week in our class. Using one of the idioms from our class last week, her words were “icing on the cake!”
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