Free English Lessons! by Ana Guerrero Sanmartin

Before starting to develop the real aims of the project, it is important that the community where we are working sees us as part of it. For this reason, we are doing some activities that help us to approach the people in a friendly way. These actions are called integration activities.

One of the activities that we have decided to do in order to integrate with the community is offering free English lessons for adults and children. The purpose of this is to get to know the inhabitants of Coripata and for them to meet and interact with us in a comfortable setting.

We have set up two classes: children (10 years old and under) and adults (older than 10 years old). As we only have one small office, we have to be clever with space. Our adult class is taught inside the office and we take the young ones to the nearby plaza, where we can use the benches and stone table there.

We are offering these lessons twice a week. Mondays 6 to 7 pm and Wednesdays 3 to 4 pm. We chose this timetable because we want the classes to be available for everyone, so people who work can attend after work and children can come after school.

So far we have had three English lessons and they have been a success. We found out that these lessons are not only useful for us but also the people of Coripata. Primarily, they learn English and they get to know a different culture. However, they get to spend time with us and strengthen bonds as they normally stay to talk after the lessons. In general, everyone was very keen on learning and interacting with all of us, especially the young ones. They are full of energy and eager to learn new things. It is very rewarding to work with them as they are very grateful and caring.

However, we noticed that working with young people is more difficult than work with adults. We have to design very active and dynamic lessons if we want to keep their attention for the whole hour. One of the biggest difficulties that we have found with the small ones was the language barrier. In general, they are hard to manage and if you can’t tell them in a clear way what you expect from them, teaching becomes a real challenge. In spite of that, all of us agree that it is a very fun experience, full of challenges and for many of us a new experience to teach English.

On the other hand, we found teaching the adults easier but still challenging. They are also eager to learn but they are quite shy and they struggle with the pronunciation, we have to be very patient and empathetic in order to make them feel comfortable in the lessons.

All these challenges are making our experience here in Coripata more rewarding and exciting that we expected at the beginning. It is not being always easy to cope with all the problems that we find in our way, but it is a great life experience as we are learning to adapt ourselves to an unexpected circumstances.  I can’t wait for the next lesson!