Learning experience: Volunteer enjoys work at community center

These volunteers are teaching English after first having to learn it themselves. It gives them a good understanding of how difficult it is. DP

By MERYL WILLIAMS, T-R Staff Writer

TimesReporter.com : For the last nine months Elizabeth Gabriel, 25, of Bolivia has been helping teach English to Hispanic residents of Tuscarawas County.

She’s also learned a few things.

“I have learned a lot,” said the volunteer at the Latin American Community Center at Dover, noting that she had to learn the language in order to teach it.

Gabriel said she was able to read and write a little English, “but only basic things,” when she began her work as a volunteer through the International Visitor Exchange Program. She said many people in the program learn a second language as they go.

“It was hard for me to understand everyone here,” said Gabriel, explaining the center’s volunteers have the same problem with Spanish. “Their Spanish is different. It’s a second language for them.”

She’s also noticed the different dialects of English that people within the United States have that differentiate them geographically from each other.

“There are different people speaking different English,” she said.
Be sure to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.