Starting a new life in a far-flung, South Pacific country involves a huge learning curve. If you don’t speak English, you’ve just added one more challenge to conquer!

Smoothing the way in are extraordinarily supportive Kiwis, trained by English Language Partners (ELP) to help former refugees and migrants come to grips with an unfamiliar culture and language.

Teaching everyday ‘survival English’ uses a lot of energy and, naturally, volunteers appreciate any chance to recharge, refresh and learn.
‍

Our recent ‘refreshing’ workshop run by ELP’s Palmerston North centre shared tips and tricks to show tutors how everyday ‘free’ bits and pieces in your house or neighborhood can be used for teaching. Household items are brilliantly practical, as they’re what new Kiwis see all around them in the community, every day.

Volunteers made teaching material from milk bottle tops, junk mail, ice-cream containers and other items. From these, they created resources teaching how to tell the time, and learn the alphabet and to build everyday vocabulary. By the end, the volunteers had added heaps of new resources to ELP’s extremely well-resourced library, for all home tutors to browse and borrow from.

Volunteer tutors love catching up with each other, and ‘teacher chatter time’ is an aspect of workshopping that is not to be underestimated! Networking is an essential part of the learning process, and a natural expression of the passion volunteers have for sharing ideas and learning new ways of teaching.

ELP is grateful for the time our exceptional, talented, generous volunteers give to helping former refugees and migrants settle in Aotearoa. Thank you all!

‍