The Global Bulldog
Volume 2, Issue 1
Winter/Spring 2014
Updates from campus
From Macedonia
Read about what has been going on at Schoenberg from the PCMI coordinator.
Discover what the holiday season was like for PCMI student Britt Harmon in Macedonia.
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Learn what PCMI student Stephanie Dempsey-‐Kalawe has been doing in Malawi.
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Publication of Gonzaga University’s Peace Corps Master’s International Program
Ingles, inglish, Englesh, engis, inles, Engles Cheyanne Greer, PCV Mozambique
I figured that after six to ten years of English lessons, my students would, at the very least, be able to spell the word English, right? Wrong! This is just one teeny tiny example of the many challenges I face teaching English here in Mozambique. My students grew up speaking one or two local African languages. Then learned Portuguese, the colonial and now national language. In sixth grade they are expected to start learning French and English to help communicate with their neighboring countries and the world.
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English in Malawi
You see, Mozambique made the decision after the Mozambican War of Independence ending in 1975, to choose Portuguese as the national language instead of
Here I am with some of my students English or French because it would be too difficult to teach the whole nation a new language. However, many of the people never learned Portuguese
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because of the little or no schooling available during the struggle for independence and the political violence that followed. Instead of changing the national language when the literacy rate was already so low, they chose to keep Portuguese and add English as a third or fourth language. Now with the country slowly growing, more schools being built and teachers being trained, the population is slowly becoming more literate in Portuguese. This is a positive sign of growth, but the country is still struggling to communicate with the rest of the world – struggling to learn language without proper materials, resources and teachers. (Continues on page 2)