Southern Ontario Cooperative of ESL Ministries
By Lorna Tatomir, Literacy and Evangelism Canada Strolling down the streets of downtown Leamington on a Friday afternoon, you’ll notice shops full of luggage, running shoes, lineups of Mexican and Caribbean workers at the banks and grocery stores. Spanish/English signs, multiple Taco-serving restaurants and a hum of Spanish language and music brighten the main street. […]
By Nancy Kingdon INTRODUCTION On October 28, 2023, fifteen participants shared their collective wisdom, as they discussed their top three student learning needs, plus their top four ESL teaching issues. Participants were surveyed ahead of time by Nancy Kingdon, with survey results noted below. SUMMARY of what you told me were your top STUDENT LEARNING […]
By Albert Janzen Although peaceful coexistence between Canadians and newcomers to Canada is a wonderful thing, there is potential for much more than that to upgrade the welcome mat that Canada puts out to help newcomers become woven into our multicultural fabric. I am not just thinking of the most recent arrivals but also about […]
By Jenny Zhang Moving to a new country is an exhilarating adventure filled with curiosity, yet it’s natural to have concerns about various vital aspects of your journey. Where can you access official information? How do you discover useful resources to aid your study, daily life, and job search? In this article, I’ll introduce a […]
By MPC Foundation When immigrant seniors make the decision to commit time and effort to learning the English Language, many of them do so when they are in their 60s and many have minimal formal education. For them, it is a challenge that they are willing to endure so that they can achieve greater inclusion […]
By Brenda Noble John G. Stackhouse Jr. has said that the church in Canada needs to live in such a way that if any force tried to shut our doors, the surrounding community would protest that they need our presence. In other words, our worship should include service to our communities which they see as […]
By Allan Pole I felt the Lord lead me in 2016 to revisit Jesus’ conversation with a Samaritan woman at the well in John chapter 4. While the disciples wanted to eat something and get out of “inhospitable” Samaria as quickly as possible, Jesus saw an opportunity to reach someone outside their ethnic group and […]
By Jenny Zhang “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Isaiah 41:10 Immigration is a life-altering experience that involves leaving everything behind in the home country to seek […]
By Albert Janzen We seldom hear of churches that teach ESL to Temporary Foreign Workers (“TFWs”), and it probably stays below the ministry radar of most churches much as the workers themselves are well below the radar of Canadian multicultural diversity. After all, they are only here temporarily, why should they need good English? There […]
By Carey Jo Johnston, for the Ottawa ESL Prayer Network Team The vision for networking people in Southern Ontario who are doing ESL ministry started with SOCEM. However, since most of the SOCEM events are in the GTA area, some of us in the Ottawa area thought we might have a subset of SOCEM. It […]