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Students
Main Students Page - Learn to Speak English Better - English as a Second Language (ESOL) - Family Literacy - Literacy in the Workplace - QuickSpeak - Success Stories
 ESL Conversation Classes
Literacy Volunteers offers weekly ESL classes every Saturday from 9:30-11:30 a.m. at the office on 1313 Main Street. The class is fairly small in size and students are provided many opportunities to practice their English skills. Classes focus mainly on conversation skills but also address other language skills: listening, reading, and writing. Many topics are covered in the class including greetings and introductions, families, food, holidays, and work; as well as the language areas of basic vocabulary, slang, idioms, and pronunciation. Students learn about American culture as well as the cultures of the other students in class. Student input is encouraged in this class and the teacher works to address students’ concerns and problems that they encounter in everyday living. The goal of the class is to help students: gain comfort using English, improve their conversation skills, speak with confidence, gain a greater understanding of U.S. culture, make friends and have fun.
Students have fun and improve their English at the same time through discussions, games, and other activities. One of the major elements of the classes is the Crossroads Café series. Crossroads Café is a series of videos designed for English Language Learners. Each episode of the series is accompanied by a work text that addresses different language skills, mainly in the areas of reading and writing. Crossroads Café has helped many students improve their English. The following summary of the videos was written by some of the ESL students in this Saturday morning class:
Crossroads Café Stories
Written by:
Saba Agonafer, Mohammed Kangame, Lei Song, and Selame Wayess
We come every Saturday to ESL class at Literacy Volunteers. We watch the Crossroads Café videos. We have watched 10 episodes. We are going to write a summary.
Mr. Brashov is the main character. He opened a restaurant and all of the stories involve people from the restaurant. Mr. Brashov owns the restaurant, he is the boss. He hired Katherine as a waitress, Rosa as a cook, and Jamal as a handyman. He also hired Henry as a busboy. Mr. Jess Washington is a regular customer at the restaurant. He thought of the name for the restaurant. He named it Crossroads Café.
On the first day, Rosa tried to cook for Mr. Brashov but she set the food on fire. Henry didn’t tell his family that he was working part-time at the restaurant. His uncle came to eat at the restaurant and he found out Henry was working there. He told Henry’s parents. They didn’t want him to work there. They came to the restaurant and met Mr. Brashov. They agreed that he could work at Crossroads Café.
One day, a health inspector came to the restaurant. She found a violin in the kitchen. Mr. Brashov asked who the violin belonged to. Henry said that it was his and apologized to Mr. Brashov. Mr. Brashov couldn’t sleep, so his brother sent him a pillow to help.
Rosa’s boyfriend came to visit her from Mexico. Rosa told him that she wanted to open her own restaurant. Jamal’s friends, Mohammed and Abdullah, came to visit Crossroads Café. Jamal’s wife, Jihan, also came to visit. Jamal pretended that he was the boss. Everyone pretended that Jamal was the boss, even Mr. Brashov. But then he told his friends the truth.
Someone robbed Jess’ house. He calls the police to come to his house. Due to this, he bought an alarm. Katherine’s son likes his planes, so Jess lends him a model plane.
Mr. Brashov’s brother came to visit from Romania. He wants Mr. Brashov to open a Romanian restaurant. He was disappointed in his trip because Mr. Brashov didn’t want to open a Romanian restaurant and also because he lost his wallet.
Henry has a friend from school named Sara. He wants to ask her on a date. She wants to go to the dance with him but he can’t dance. So Rosa teaches him how to dance. Unfortunately, Sara saw them dancing and got mad. Rosa explained what happened and Sara wasn’t mad anymore. Katherine has two kids and Rosa goes to Katherine’s house to baby sit. Her daughter tells Rosa that Katherine has two jobs because she wants to buy a birthday gift for her son.
Jamal was arrested by the police by mistake. Mr. Brashov goes to the police station and asks, “Where is Jamal Al-Jibali?” Mr. Brashov gets Jamal out of jail. Henry’s grandparents were lost but the police found them.
Barbara came to the restaurant; she is a con artist. She asked Mr. Brashov to dinner. Meanwhile, Bill invited Katherine for dinner. Katherine saw Barbara in the restaurant with another man. Bill called Jamal and Jamal took a picture. Katherine and Jamal gave the picture to Mr. Brashov and he found out that Barbara was a con artist. At the end of the day Mr. Brashov gets his money back from Barbara. Jamal spills water on Barbara on accident and everyone laughs. She gets mad and leaves.
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