A group of trainee teachers from the National Institute of
Education or NIE, has been helping foreign workers learn
English.
They make their way to a foreign workers dormitory on Pulau Brani
two nights a week.
And one lesson it seems is enough for the foreign construction
workers who are from resorts world sentosa to pick up simple
conversational English.
How do they do it?
The news desk finds out.
When I visited the class, some 30 construction workers were
learning conversational English through songs and role play.
The workers are working on the Resorts World Sentosa
project.
The lessons, conducted at the dormitory were initiated by a group
of 23 first year trainee teachers from NIE as part of their
community service project.
Through non-government organisation, Transient Workers Count Too,
the teachers were introduced to Resorts World Sentosa, who were
keen to have the teachers volunteer their time teaching English to
their workers.
' Project Bridge' aims to equip foreign workers with basic English
to express common health and work-related issues.
Jenny Tan is one of the trainee teachers involved in the
project.
"Here we adopt the translation method. In every lesson we standby a
Chinese and Tamil translators, anytime the participants do
not
understand the vocabulary or sentence structure we are teaching
them, we have a translator to translate into their language."
The teachers will be conducting the course over a period of three
weeks, reaching out to 180 of these workers.
Although the numbers may not seem significant for a dormitory with
4,000 workers, Ms Tan says its a first step that will allow some
workers to be able to interact with the local
communities.
"We hope that through this project the workers will be able to
apply what we have taught them in their daily lives and not only
that. Through this project bridges we will be able to bridge to
them to teach them so that they will learn and the teachers will be
able to learn their culture and befriend them."
But can these workers pick up simple English after just one
lesson?
This was what Ganesan, a 23 year old foreign worker from India
asked me after his lesson.
"Can i have one chicken rice please?"
--938Live