At the beginning of the second wave of the covid-19 pandemic
in October 2020 we started thinking about the community help the American Center US Point could
offer to ease the consequences in education. While US Point is a language and
cultural center, we decided to help with English.
We launched the project "US Point
helps" and in the period from November 2020 - April 2021 we
offered special individual English consultations for students "Help with
English", "Help with Online Teaching" for teachers and
conversation clubs of different levels "Convo".
Help with English were individual 30-minute
online meetings. Any student could join and discuss issues he/she had with
English. Students usually asked for help with homework and assignments and they
wanted us to repeat or explain some English grammar. More than once students
only wanted to speak to someone about their life and feelings ...
Before the pandemic US Point organised a conversation club
1x a week. With the project "US Point helps" we added two more conversation
clubs - one for adults and high school students beginners (age group
16+) and the other for primary and secondary school intermediate - advance
students (age group 6-15). Conversation club for primary and secondary school
students was a great success. The students were joining the club regularly
every week. They were discussing different topics and made their vocabulary and
fluency grow. The benefit of these virtual conversations were that any student
could join from everywhere, make new friends and learn about different parts of
the region.
The reaction of the students and their repeated joining to
consultations only confirmed that our decision to launch this project was
right.
These are the words of one 5th grader: "English in US
Point helped me. We did not have time to practice English grammar during online
classes at school and I missed speaking. US Point helped me with grammar.
Thanks to conversation I learned how to communicate. I liked I could meet other
children."
Nowadays in US Point we are getting back to our regular
programme. Join us on Facebook and Instagram. We
will connect you with the U.S.!
Institute of Applied Language Studies |
Daniela Lukavská |
24. 05. 2021 |