“LEARN TOGETHER ENGLISH EXCHANGE AT BALE TAU”

30th November 2017

by Caroline Kovacs

Each week on Wednesday evening we have an English class at Bale Tau. Anyone from the community is invited to join, but our main group comes from the Reefbreak Batukaras group of local surfer boys.

Our group includes some younger grommies (young surfers) aged 13. They are learning from some of the older guys who already have a grasp on the English language. These friends of Bale Tau like Jenal, Wawan, Cep, and Yoga all help out with translating English and Indonesian to help the younger students with new words and concepts. In the process it helps them practice their English. English lessons have been led by CLEAR volunteer Carolyn, who has been helping with lessons and activities at Bale Tau for the past month and a half. Each week we have a new activity or concept. This past week we learned about prepositions of place – in, on, above, behind, under, in front of, next to. After learning the direct translations of the word, we demonstrated them with chocolates and a cup –take out the chocolates in the cup; put the chocolates next to the cup, put the cup between two chocolates (I have learned that class always is better if it involves chocolate!) Next we made two teams,  each following a set of directions using items around Bale Tau: put the book under the table; put the cup behind the bookshelf; stand in front of someone shorter than you. Finally, each group had to write directions to give the other team. Some of the directions might have gotten a bit silly (“put the phone under the bridge”; “throw the cat in the river” – don’t worry, we didn’t actually do those ones!) but it was a lot of fun. Last week we learned different verbs and played a game of bingo to practice, and the week before we had conversation practice, learning how to ask to buy something (chocolate again, of course!), how much it costs, and the other niceties involved in interactions.


This past weekend the group came over on Saturday afternoon to make pizzas in our pizza oven at Bale Tau.

We made dough from scratch and even managed to obtain some real mozzarella cheese.

The pizzas were delicious and it was a really fun day just hanging out at Bale Tau with the English practice group.

We look forward to more English Exchange groups and pizza-making. Thanks to all for participating!