Hey everyone, welcome to my blog! My name is Leila Aluka, I’m a first-year student from Pompano Beach, Florida, majoring in International Affairs.
This summer, I’ll be volunteering at an English Café, which is a free program offered through Broward County Libraries to all people who wish to improve their English-speaking skills. The English Café offers free English lessons to the people who attend, as well as an opportunity for students to hold conversations with people who are more advanced in English. I’ll start off by assisting the volunteers with smaller tasks and almost shadowing how the classes go, but towards the end of the summer, I’ll have the chance to teach language classes myself. This is related to my experience because I’ll have the chance to be hands-on with the material being taught and I’ll have an opportunity to interact with the students.
I’m really excited to get into my summer experience! My expectations for this summer are that I’m going to have a lot of fun teaching and learning more about people that are interested in improving their own personal language skills. I’m also hoping that I can learn from the students about their own cultures and unique languages, as well as how their level of fluency in English impacts their everyday lives.
I’m a little unsure of the turnouts of the English Café sessions. They may only have one person show up each lesson- or it may be people that have the same native language or from the same place. This may limit how much I learn about different cultures, but regardless, I’ll still be sure to learn from whoever shows up!
I’m also nervous about taking a hand at teaching- it’s very new to me and I hope that it comes natural to me rather than it being forced. Knowing me though, I should be able to handle it!
We’ll see how everything plays out in the next update…. stay tuned!
HSF House Blogs 