Ariana Terebelo #5

My first experience with teaching people with no prior knowledge of the target language was two summers ago. I went to Israel, and for a week of the time I was there, we volunteered at an Ethiopian Refugee camp. The people there had just come to Israel from Ethiopia, and lived at this place until they were able to speak Hebrew and English at a level that would allow them to actively participate in society. The children, and adults, went to school and classes for most of the day. Half of the day was Hebrew and half of the day was English. It was a total immersion program, since they had a short time to learn the languages. Some of the people there spoke some broken English, but not enough to afford them the ability to hold a conversation. Since I am bilingual and speak both Hebrew and English fluently, I was assigned to the younger children, while many of the adults were assigned to the older children and adults. This is because the young kids responded better when learning from someone younger, rather then someone who was much older than them, and possibly their parents as well. 

For the week that I was there we focused mainly on learning the alphabets and basic words that will help them in society, such as, “hello” “goodbye” “table” “chair” “money” etc. The program did not focus so much on getting the people to correctly spell the words, since the main focus was getting them to learn the language and be able to speak it. Also, grammar and punctuation was not a huge focus of this because, once again, the speaking aspect was the main focus. 

Even though I was only there for a week, there was a definite improvement in their language speaking skills. I did not think that only a week of teaching would make a difference, however, a huge improvement was made. It was amazing being able to help these children learn to speak and recognize a language other than the one they already know. It is crazy how much was done in just one week, and I would have loved to stay there longer and see how far they got in a month, or a year. 

As a whole, this was honestly one of the most amazing experiences ever. I got to help children and adults learn a language, which, in turn, would allow them to play an active role in the new country that they had just arrived at.Learning these languages are not things that they did to score higher on tests, they did not participate as a way of giving themeless more opportunities at bigger and better universities. These people learned this language so that they could live and survive somewhere new.