I hope to build trust and connections with people by teaching English, so that when I start my environmental initiatives a little bit later, they will be received with more attention.
The community has this need because English is not commonly spoken here in Paraguay, and even many English teachers don’t speak much English. Just as many of us take years of Spanish in school in the States but don’t retain anything, most kids learn English in schools but don’t retain much of it due to poor teaching and lack of practice. The most common method of learning here is lecture-based learning, where the students copy whatever is written on the board. With language learning, this method of learning yields poor results, as students must practice speaking, listening and conversing in order to learn a new language. Most people I have encountered here know more English than I would expect, but they are often nervous to speak due to their pronunciation of the words. Thus, the method of copying and memorization taught in school also fails to give students the skills to actually pronounce the words. It doesn’t help that many teachers don’t speak English themselves, so they don’t even know how to pronounce the words. I'm hoping to help my new students learn how to speak more effectively.
During the two years that I will be living here, I hope to help community meet this need. I plan to have an English conversation club for people that already know English and just need more practice speaking and listening. I also plan on helping the English teacher in the school a couple times a week with her lessons.
