English Training Days

Michael and Val

UK Geography

The Monday group

The Hungarian sketch

Some of the Tuesday group

When I was in Poland last December, I visited a ministry called "Graceland" (http://www.gracelandministries.org) started by two Canadian business women. They had a 3 prong strategy for ministry. Offer professional English lessons (for payment), have a coffee house and start a church in the same building. They developed a "center" for Christian based ministry. They also had guest lecturers who provided business classes for professional people. One of their newest ideas/outreaches was to Polish teachers of English. They were meeting weekly, watching an episode of a tv program and following up with discussions.

I loved the idea of "helping" local teachers of english with the chance to talk with native speakers. At Christmas I shared this idea with a British couple who were coming into Hungary regularly and did english camps here every summer. We then began to plan our English workshop. (We could also belong to a club of Englsh speakers who bought and renovated a house in a Hungarian village and - what stories we have!! :-)

What a wonderful time we had together. We held the course for 2 days and we had 9 participants 6 of which attended both days. The weather cooled a little which really made the time enjoyable. Val and Michael did wonderful lessons on poetry, (serious and not), UK geography, English and American idioms/proverbs, British humour, which included watching the sketches and teaming together to develope a Hungarian culture sketch. I hosted the event, organized meals and did a lesson on Ogden Nash poetry and another with some information on NY and AK.

We are now awaiting detailed evaluation forms from the participants to plan the next course.