Learning English

Ezwenelisha Support Group learning the parts of the body.

For those of you who are dedicated followers of our Facebook page, you'll know that we have been hard at work teaching English to both our Ezwenelisha and Khula support groups.

The volunteers have been coming up with English lessons at the request of each group's members, who in the beginning wanted to know phrases commonly used during support group. This meant things like "I had a good week" and how to introduce themselves. They also learned the parts of the body, about verb tenses and even spent some weeks doing fill-in-the-blank exercises put together by the volunteers.

From there we moved on to having debates, spoken in as much English as possible - one popular debate at both support groups was a "battle of the sexes" discussion about whether women were better than men.

Perfecting their use of the language will aide them in their day-to-day lives and is also a great skill to have so they can practice English with their children, who must learn English in school. It is a good tool to have if they wish to gain employment.

However, most importantly the lessons have been giving our members confidence like we've never seen them have before. Although most of the men and women who participate are generally outspoken and enthusiastic, becoming more comfortable with English has brought the support groups to a whole other level.

With one of the aims of the support group being the empowerment of the members, volunteers and staff have been ecstatic with how well the English lessons have helped us achieve this goal.