Wendy Dore has been volunteering with ELP Christchurch since she trained as an ESOL Home Tutor in May 2017.

She was matched with an elementary level Vietnamese learner, Phuong Bui.

In the beginning it was a steep learning curve for Wendy to find the best way to help and support Phuong to learn new words and to improve her pronunciation in particular. Wendy used the resources in our ELP library and did a lot of research on different websites as well to come up with a range of useful activities to use in Phuong’s lessons. Wendy is always extremely dedicated in ensuring she is well prepared for every lesson, to help Phuong reach her learning goals. Wendy built a really solid rapport with Phuong and they now have become firm friends, sharing a love of art and gardening.

At first Phuong had great difficulty with certain sounds in English and wasn’t confident using English at all outside her home. Every week when Wendy asked her if she had used English at all, she would say no. A real highlight occurred in July this year was when Wendy asked her this same question and she so happily announced that she had used English at the shops recently. She could understand the prices more clearly and she also had a brief chat with her neighbour. Phuong is always prepared and ready to learn at each lesson and does any homework Wendy sets for her. She is really motivated to improve her English as she sees her grandchildren making very fast progress, she wants to keep up with them!

As an aside, in addition to Phuong’s improved English ability, she recently invited Wendy and her husband to a Vietnamese restaurant for dinner, as a way of showing her appreciation for all that Wendy has done to support her.

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