At Open House we print the Bible times double-sided, therefore I usually only put the © on the back page. But please respect the copyright! You have permission to download and use these Bible times and to share them with friends as long as you are giving them as freely as you have received them. Please contact the owner before publishing them in any form.
Hello Linda!
I tried e-mailing a response to your questions from my regular e-mail address and then from my gmail address. I don’t know if either went through. So, I will try to copy it to this and hope it gets to you. If you want to respond after next week, please do so through pottenger@ejoka.com as I can’t check the gmail account as easily when I am at home. Thanks!
Sent July 22. Sorry but it is long.
Hello Linda!
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I am currently at the coast of Kenya for a missionary retreat. So, I have a better internet connection here than at home. So, I goggled ESL & the Bible and your site came up. So, I really don’t know about a lot of other resources or other ESL sites. I can connect to the internet at home but it is often very slow.
As for my work, I work with adults from about 22-50. They are all church leaders in a first generation church. I have worked among the Turkana for 13 years but my work until now was in developing adult readers so they could move forward in the faith. So, my students are considered pre-literate since they have only recently learned to read in their own language. Many have been reading for over 10 years, but it is still a pretty new skill.
This is my first ESL class. I have 15 students who come into the small town where I live from their desert homes for one week each month. They do take a month or two off in the year but we haven’t done that yet. I started teaching in March. So, we have had 5 classes. They will have a break in September. I struggled coming up with things for them to do on the off weeks. I have given them exercise books and require them to write at least twice a week in them. I also encourage them to speak and practice what they have learned but there only a few English speakers in each of the areas where they come from. Only a couple live in the same village – the rest are pretty spread out. I have also sent some English through picture worksheets with them that I found on a site called Peter’s wife. It covers basic sentence structure but doesn’t give them the opportunity to hear English. They don’t really have cd or cassette players that they can use for that. So, that does hinder pronunciation and familiarity some.
Even so, I am amazed at the progress they have made so far. I have had a specific goal for each week of class. On the last day they go into town and practice speaking to people there what they have learned in class. The people in town are more educated and from other parts of Kenya, so it is not hard to find English speakers there. So, they can greet people and ask simple questions. They can make simple descriptions of people and tell a little bit about their families. This last class they asked people how they were feeling and gave a simple feeling they had and a little bit of why (Ex. I am sad today because of the problems in town.)
I started out with a little TPR for words like go, come, write, look, point, cross-out, match, open & close. Then we worked using the Oxford basic picture dictionary. I am using some of the literacy worksheets and things from that series which helps. About the only Bible stuff we have done so far is that I had them trying to memorize Ps 23 because they are shepherds of goats, sheep, donkeys and camels. This last week of class, we moved on to the Lord’s prayer as they have been trying to learn to pray in English before our meals and our break times.
We have gotten through the first three units in the dictionary but the next unit is all about houses and things that they do not have any familiarity with. (apartments, elevators, living rooms, bedrooms, plumbing, kitchen gadgets etc…) They live in huts, sleep outside on mats on the sand and have another open hut for cooking. So, I am concerned about trying to make this unit relevant and yet not too overwhelming in learning not only the English word but also what it is. I am thinking that we will not cover the unit in one week but probably over two or three weeks as it is about 8 pages in the dictionary. I know that this will begin to happen more frequently as we discuss things that are common in the more developed world – even in other parts of Kenya. I am just trying to ease into it by finding some Bible things to help. They are familiar with the Bible in their own language, so at least they will not necessarily have to learn definitions as well as words when we do something with that.
Okay, so there you have a bit more information about my work. As for me, I do not have an educational background in teaching although I have done it in practice for many years. I was a biology major in college and then went to seminary before I came to Kenya. I went to an intensive ESL training in Seattle, WA. last year. It was 12 master’s credit hours in 1 month. So, we covered a lot of stuff. Primarily the teachers there were going to places that were not so remote and that had English as the main spoken language. Many of them were staying in the States and teaching immigrants. They said “there are a lot of resources on the internet now, so that will help a lot,” but they didn’t give any kind of list. I am not so old that I don’t know about computers and the internet, but old enough that I mostly use my computer as a glorified typewriter. This is especially true since I have been in such a remote area where the internet only became available on a reliable basis (even though it is very slow) in the past couple of years. So I am not all that internet savvy. I just got lucky I guess in finding your site
So, sorry to make it so long, but I hope it helps you in thinking of some things that might help me. I do appreciate that you answered me in the first place and hope to hear from you again. Even just some helpful sites to visit since I don’t have lots of opportunities to just surf the net to find things. Thanks again for your help!
blessings, Lynn Pottenger
p.s. I used my e-mail address that downloads to my computer as I have to check my gmail account online and don’t check it all that often.
I teach ESL as a ministry of my local church. I’d love to utilize your site and handouts as a resource, but when I click on them it comes up “password protected.” Is there a way for me to access these lessons/handouts?
Thank you!
I must have made a mistake. Please tell me which ones you are trying to access and I will fix the password protection.
I use password protection so people can’t easily modify them, but occasionally I click on the wrong box. Sorry for the inconvenience!!!!!