Learning English is a critical need for immigrants looking to work or further their education.  Many immigrants move to Hamtramck from their home country with little to no understanding of the English language.  As the immigrant population has continued to rise since the launch of Acts 29, we have provided English as a Second Language (ESL) classes for men and women.  Our purposes in teaching ESL are to meet a critical need in the community, build relationships with students and share of the hope we have in Christ.  With Acts 29 being located on the north end of Hamtramck where many Bengali men and women live, most of our students are from Bangladesh.  We have also taught a handful of students from Yemen, Poland, Bosnia, Albania and the Ukraine.  The students’ histories vary from just arriving to the United States, to having lived here for 20 years.  Most of the students practice Islam or Hinduism.  As trusting relationships grow between our teachers and students, there are numerous opportunities to share about Christ.

MEN’S ESL

Acts 29  has developed a strong ESL program for men, preparing a format and focus to ensure our students success in the classroom, the workplace and the wider world.  This includes formal classroom setting, regular testing intervals, grading and a structured curriculum of progression in skill as we prepare our students for the workplace, community college or vocational training in our cabinet shop program.

This demands the use of a professional curriculum designed to thoroughly address the needs of English language learners and enable them to smoothly progress in skill and fluency. We were blessed to have been given a discount from Learning English with Laughter, a distinct curriculum that builds student proficiency in English from the ground up with extensive material for teachers and students. The curriculum blends and builds material to progress through four modules of study from beginner to advanced, and allows room for us to insert our own activities and relational learning.

Our hope is that our ESL class will become a truly transformational ministry that addresses the physical, emotional, social and spiritual needs of our students and enables them to achieve success.

Men’s ESL currently hosts 32 students at three different levels of English proficiency. Each level has its own set of teachers and its own classroom setting. This enables smaller class sizes, more personal attention and greater opportunities to build relationships, which will lead to greater evangelistic opportunities.

WOMEN’S ESL

As we teach English, we also teach words that are pertinent to Christ and who He is in our lives (i.e. friendship, peace,  joy). We hold discussions related to these words and tell stories from the Bible and testimonies from our lives.  Over Christmas we showed a clip from a movie about Jesus’ life called Magdalena in order to explain the Christmas story.  We showed it in three languages and a couple of students borrowed the movie to watch the rest of it at home.  Our prayer is that they will come to know Jesus and want to be His disciple as they learn about Him.  Please pray with us as we look forward to opportunities when we will have a chance to share about the death and resurrection of Christ, and what that means for all people.