ESOL News!

Courses for tutors ESOL stands for English for Speakers of Other Languages. We ran two Introduction to Working with ESOL Learners courses on four Saturdays in March and twenty five tutors attended. They took up training which will help them to teach basic English to people who want to learn it as their second language. Now many of our ESOL students not only attend a class, they also have their own one-to-one tutor to give them more practice through the week. So far everyone seems to be enjoying it! ESOL TUTORS Please contact Maggie or Susan if you need any resources. In the summer we hope to index all the ESOL resources and on Tuesday 12th August we’re going to have an ESOL Resource day to let you see all the materials. We will send out further details at the end of July. Professional Development Awards PDA for Volunteers (in Initial ESOL Teaching). This certificated course will be available at the end of 2008. If you’re interested, you will get more information on the SQA website – www.sqa.org.uk New Material On Saturday 10th May Maggie and Susan went to a workshop in Glasgow about “Frequently Asked Questions: the Great British Job Interview” A DVD was produced which contains real interviews for jobs in a factory, a hospital, a supermarket, a delivery service and a college. The DVD discusses some of the challenges facing speakers of languages other than English when they go for interviews and gives tutors ideas how to prepare them. The DVD offers advice on • Reading between the lines: what interview questions really mean • What kind of answers job interviewers expect • How candidates need to present themselves through their answers • Making overseas experience count There is a booklet to go with the DVD. If you would like a copy of the DVD please contact Wendy or Carol-Anne in the Learning Shop. Projects That’s not everything though. Right now, South Ayrshire Lifelong Learning Partners are planning to move into action with more projects to help non-English speakers. Last year, we worked with The Scottish Polish Society to provide young mums with English classes while their young ones played in the crèche at John Pollock Centre. Eileen Opiolka ran an English class in The Learning Shop on Thursday evenings. Joan Black arranged conversation classes in Carnegie Library, led by Sally Lee and Evelyn McWhinnie. We ran additional classes in the CVO building in Crown Street, generated a CD with English spoken with an Ayrshire accent, and provided English classes on site for workers at Nichol McKay in Monkton. Not only that, we provided a range of 2-week intensive English classes and funded three tutors to achieve CELTA (Cambridge English Language Teaching Award) so that we would have more qualified ESOL tutors in South Ayrshire. Phew!!! We did so well, we received an additional £40,000 funding from the Scottish Government this year. So what are we going to do now? There’s still a lot of debate, but possible new projects could be Preparation for Citizenship, Family Working in Schools, Workplace ESOL learning, and Conversation classes. Hopefully all this will fit in nicely with the new ESOL classes Ayr College is aiming to provide this year.

Not all Pools are water features...

We’ve got a new Pool. Not in the garden – in The Learning Shop! It’s a Tutor Pool. Since February, we’ve been gathering talent in the form of Volunteer Tutors who are looking for some paid tutoring. They give their services on a self employed basis. Any tutor can apply for membership of the Tutor Pool if they have been registered with us for 6 months or more. All they need to do is contact The Learning Shop for an application form. We then seek a commendation from their Development Worker, or a referee who can confirm their tutoring ability. If they meet our standards, then we enter their name into a database which is made available to partners in the South Ayrshire Lifelong Learning Partnership. If they’re looking for tutors, they can select from our Tutor Pool. At the moment we have over 30 tutors available in this way.

 

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