December 7, 2002 - Christianity Today: Polish student says Teaching English may be the 21st century's most promising way to teach Freedom and Liberty
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December 7, 2002 - Christianity Today: Polish student says Teaching English may be the 21st century's most promising way to teach Freedom and Liberty
Polish student says Teaching English may be the 21st century's most promising way to teach Freedom and Liberty
Read and comment on this excerpt from an article by Polish student Agnieszka Tennant from Christianity Today on the importance of teaching English worldwide. Mrs. Tennant directs his remarks in an evangelical sense to the importance of spreading the "Good News." However, her ideas also apply to other areas as he says that:
Eager to wake from a communism-induced malaise, my generation (born in the 1970s) studied English hungrily. Soon after the Iron Curtain lifted in 1989, we abandoned the foreign, yet eerily familiar, Russian language (mandatory classes attempted to indoctrinate us with readings that idolized Lenin and Stalin). Instead, we took up the tongue, it seemed, of Liberty herself: the sensuous, many-idiomed, supple English.
Teaching English has long been a controversial subject among Peace Corps Volunteers with a wide spectrum of opinion on its merits. Some PCVs says TESOL helps developing countries, some say it is a waste of time, some say we send volunteers to teach English because they lack real technical skills to teach anything else, and some say teaching English is a form of cultural imperialism. Read the story to get another point of view on the subject from someone who learned English from a TESOL teacher at:
The Ultimate Language Lesson*
* This link was active on the date it was posted. PCOL is not responsible for broken links which may have changed.
The Ultimate Language Lesson
Teaching English may well be the 21st century's most promising way to take the Good News to the world.
By Agnieszka Tennant | posted 12/6/2002
When Tom Scovel—one of the world's top teachers of English teachers, linguistics professor at the politically correct San Francisco State University, and a committed Christian—says that "learning a new language is, in many ways, like being born again linguistically," it resonates with me.
I was one of many young Poles wooed by God in the world's most popular and powerful language. Eager to wake from a communism-induced malaise, my generation (born in the 1970s) studied English hungrily. Soon after the Iron Curtain lifted in 1989, we abandoned the foreign, yet eerily familiar, Russian language (mandatory classes attempted to indoctrinate us with readings that idolized Lenin and Stalin). Instead, we took up the tongue, it seemed, of Liberty herself: the sensuous, many-idiomed, supple English.
Agnieszka Tennant is an associate editor of Christianity Today.
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This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; Special Interests - TESOL ; COS - Poland; Speaking Out
PCOL3766
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Hi. I am the author of the article you posted here. I'm honored you did that, but I have two requests. One, I am a Mrs. and not a Mr. Secondly, it's not legal for you to post the entire text of the article from the site of Christianity Today. Please remove the body of the article and feel free to link to the article on our site: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2002/013/1.32.html
Thank you! Agnieszka Tennant
