How to learn English grammar and foreign languages fast with Esperanto (Primary)

Workshop Summary:

English grammar and foreign languages are important and useful skills for students, but few people know that both skills are actually interconnected. This unique and specifically designed workshop helps students develop grammar knowledge and expertise as well as strategies in learning any foreign language, using Esperanto as an example.  Esperanto is an artificial language devised in 1887 and was intended to be a universal international language to promote racial and cultural equality. It remains the world's most widely spoken, constructed language.

Students will be fascinated by this artificial language and the workshop will demonstrate how this can assist them in their English grammar as well as picking up a new foreign language. It will benefit students who are looking to improve or have an interest in English, foreign languages and linguistics. It also provides an opportunity for like-minded students to connect with each other on topics of interest.

Students will attend the online classes between 9:30am-12:30pm (AEST) from Monday to Friday for one full week. The English grammar topics that will be covered include:

• Part of speech
• Prefixes and suffixes
• Tenses (present, past, future)
• Subject verb object
• Infinitive forms
• Modal verbs
• Relative clauses and question formation
• Singular/plural
• Prepositions

Students will be able to do basic self-introduction and read simple texts in Esperanto by the end of the course. They will also be introduced to some strategies in foreign language learning and inferencing skills in reading.

Schedule: 15th-19th April (9:30am-12:30pm AEST)

The workshop will be led by Ms Wong, a high school English teacher in Sydney and a tutor and mentor for gifted students worldwide from countries including Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and the UK. Ms Wong is a member of Mensa and graduated with a Masters Degree in Gifted Education and Educational Research from UNSW with excellence. Linguistics is one of her personal interests and she is a polyglot speaking English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, and her recent passion is Esperanto. She attained N2 level of Japanese proficiency after one year of Japanese learning when she was 13 years old.

This workshop will be delivered by Zoom and students are expected to set up their own connection to Zoom.