CELT 2021 Presenter Information
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Aneta Steel
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Aneta Steel was born and raised in the Czech Republic in a Christian family. Her dream was to study in the U.S. and further her language abilities. The Lord gave her the opportunity three years ago when He opened the door for her to attend Emmaus Bible College. She is a junior majoring in K-12 ESL education.
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Session 1 on Friday, March 5, from 2:15-2:45 (PT)
Online ESL Ministry Amid Covid-19
Online ESL Ministry Amid Covid-19
One of the most important goals for teacher candidates is to gain culturally sensitive teaching skills to work with culturally and linguistically diverse students. However, many students lack an authentic learning experience to connect with them. Emmaus Bible College started an ESL café ministry as a way to serve and teach English to immigrant, refugee and international students in Dubuque, Iowa. In the past, we met with ESL students throughout the semester to teach English and share God’s love. However, Covid-19 pandemic made it challenging to meet them in-person. Thus, in order to continue the partnership between the university and community, the ESL ministry switched to an online one-on-one tutoring model. The research aims to collect the data from 22 ESL students and 22 tutors who participated in 8-week online tutoring. The data will be collected through a post-tutoring survey. Out of 22 students, 19 students identified themselves as non-Christians. One interesting fact is more than half of the students are Catholic students who are nuns and priests from all over the world. This survey aims to find perceived strengths and challenges of this model and discover if this can be a sustaining model for pre-service teachers and an effective way to do ESL ministry.