Amai Education Cic

We teach ESOL & Literacy to local women, helping them to integrate within their local community as well as wider society.

Empowered women empower women.

A parishioner approached one of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Mary, wanting to volunteer a couple of hours per week using her experience as an ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages)lecturer to help individuals within the local community. There happened to be a group of women one of the Sisters thought would benefit and within a fortnight classes began.

Several years on, we have had learners come and go, with some even returning. We are proud that, with regular attendance, every learner has achieved something. For instance, all women volunteer within the local community, two attend college and two are employed. The majority of our other learners want to improve their English language proficiency to gain employment, with a view of increasing their household income and to also support their children's education.

With this in mind, coupled with our belief that all language has to have meaning to be understood, contexts for lessons focus on situations our learners may find themselves in, such as writing an absence letter to a teacher or arranging a doctor's appointment, and topics of interest, such as political party manifestos for the last general election.

Our lesson are pitched at EL2 of the Adult ESOL Core Curriculum (AECC), with differentiation provided for more and less able learners. Learners are also periodically asked what they want to learn to encourage them to take ownership of their language learning. Having a learner-centred approach helps to develop confidence alongside learning ESOL because our experience has taught us that without the former the latter will often impede.

This page has primarily been created for our learners to use a different medium in which to develop their English skills and as part of our new IT course. Nevertheless, we welcome to our page anyone with a love of linguistics, language and learning.