Friday, 7 Oct 2016

This week has mainly been oriented towards helping some of the YSA with English and their homework assignments.  We have done a LOT of reading of papers and the applicable corrections.  English is NOT an easy language to learn - or teach.  There are so many rules and TWICE as many exceptions to the rules.
It seems that most of the Asians, Spanish & Portuguese YSA all have the same issues with the English language due to the similarity in structure of their languages.  The main issues are: 1- when is a noun plural with an "s" and when is it not; 2- how to use "a", "the", "an" - the articles; 3- the use of gerunds ("ing" words).   Boy, my grade school English teacher would be impressed with what we are learning.
And then we have some of the Asian kids who write extremely well. It is very encouraging to see the improvement that is made and can be made - with time and effort.

Margaret sweating over the review of papers from last night's English writing class exercise. We spend a lot of time reviewing the papers and making corrections, so the kids will learn to write properly

This morning I also spent time finding out who is responsible for one of the multi-function printers that is "hidden" in one of the back rooms and is used by the full time young elders & sisters.  I think I finally got that taken care of.   As a member of the bishopric, I try to protect the ward's budget by allocating expenses to the proper organisation, but that is not always easy or clear as to who owns what.  Still, I would rather spend the money on the kids than on something else, if at all possible.

We just had a man & his sister stop by asking about help in learning to speak better English - even if it is American English.  They are from Slovenia, but are now Australian citizens.  However, their accent (sounds like Eastern Europe or Russian) is keeping them from getting better jobs.  So we are here to serve - all the people of Australia, not just members of our Church.

Tonight we do not have to clean the floor we are on.  The other missionary couple will be doing that - HOORAY.  I think we will go to China town and see if we can find the long potato chip on a skewer that Margaret ate when we were in Xian.  Hopefully we will get to eat dinner before 10:30 pm today.  Last night was another 10:20 pm sit down for dinner.   At least we are keeping busy and are not bored.