Partners in Ministry: English Language Classes
From August to October 2021, two members of Wycliffe Singapore developed online English Language classes for some of our Indonesian ministry partners. We met with William, the coordinator, to find out more about teaching English as a second language.
1. Tell us more about these classes; how did they start?
The Indonesian English Class ministry started with a request from our Indonesian partners. It came at a time when my spouse Michelle and I were in the middle of a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) certification course. We had returned to Singapore after many years in other countries and took this course to retool for further deployment. God’s perfect timing!
Our Indonesian coordinator informed us that 42 students were interested in this English class. This meant that we had to recruit teachers to conduct the classes. We crafted a flyer and received a very good response. Out of the 30+ responses, 10 teachers were selected. Two were members of Wycliffe Singapore, six were from various churches in Singapore and one was from Malaysia.
With the help of the Indonesian coordinator, students participated in a placement test and submitted an audio recording of themselves answering five questions to determine their English level. Using this information, we divided the group into three levels and five classes - two beginner classes, two intermediate classes and one advanced class.
We bought an online curriculum for the teachers to use as a resource in their preparation of the lessons.
We began the class year in August 2021 and the last lesson was held on 28 October 2021; a total of 22 hourly lessons for the five classes, meeting twice a week.
2. What has been most challenging about teaching English as a second language?
The placement test gave us an indication of the students’ English level but it was not very precise. Early on, the teachers had difficulty adjusting the lesson to the students’ level. After the first two weeks, as the teachers and the students got to know one another, I could tell that learning was beginning to take flight.
Another challenge was that some of the students lived in remote locations where the internet was not very stable, and they often had to reconnect during the classes.
3. What is your greatest takeaway from this programme?
Our aim for this class was to help build English language capacity so our Indonesian partners could be more effective in their Bible translation roles.
Seeing the students come in lesson after lesson and along with their enthusiasm and improvement through the weeks is probably the greatest reward the teachers could ask for.
We saw the students grow in confidence using the language both inside and outside of the Zoom classroom, for example in using social media. They are no longer just students and teachers; no longer just partners in the Bible translation movement; but they are brothers and sisters in Christ. We rejoiced together with students who got married during this period and with those who graduated from their formal and informal education programmes, We also mourned together with those who suffered illness and had family members who passed away. We became family and look forward to the day we can meet face-to-face.
4. Words of advice for volunteer teachers?
Due to some of the students’ unreliable internet bandwidth, minimising the use of technology (other than the Zoom meeting room itself) makes classes easier for the students. For students with English as their second language, less teaching, more practice and more speaking opportunities are very important and useful for them.
News
View all articles
05/2025 Global
05/2025 Global
‘We’ve come very far, very fast’
A tech observer outlines what AI will mean soon for workplaces and ministry
Read more
Global
Tech pioneer: Christians ‘have to show up’ for AI
Silicon Valley pioneer Pat Gelsinger was CEO of Intel Corporation until December 2024. Quickly realising his career in technology was not finished, he joined the faith/tech platform Gloo in early 2025 as the executive chair and head of technology. He is also a general partner at the venture capital firm Playground Global. Gelsinger was instrumental in the development of cloud computing, Wi-Fi, USB and many other everyday technologies. He estimates his work has touched 60 to 70 percent of humanity. Here are highlights of his keynote talk at the 2025 Missional AI Summit. You can watch his entire talk here. Pat Gelsinger (left) is interviewed onstage by Steele Billings. Both are with Gloo. Watch the full interview here. Is technology good or bad? Technology is neither good nor bad. It’s neutral. It can be used for good. It can be used for bad. … If you think back to the Roman roads, why did Christ come when he came? I’ll argue the Pax Romana and the Roman roads. … The greatest technology of the day was the Roman road system. It was used so the Word could go out. Historical example I will argue Martin Luther was the most significant figure of the last thousand years. And what did he do? He used the greatest piece of technology available at the day, the Gutenberg printing press. He created Bibles. … He broke, essentially, the monopoly on the Bible translations …. He ushered in education. He created the systems that led to the Renaissance. That’s a little punk monk who only wanted to get an audience with the pope because he thought he had a few theological errors. I’ll argue (Luther was) the most significant figure of the last thousand years, using technology to improve the lives of every human that he touched at the time. How today compares to the dawn of the internet AI is more important. AI will be more significant. AI will be more dramatic. … This is now incredibly useful, and we’re going to see AI become just like the internet, where every single interaction will be infused with AI capabilities. In the 75-year-or-so history of computing, we humans have been adapting to the computer. … With AI, computers adapt to us. We talk to them. They hear us. They see us for the first time. And now they are becoming a user interface that fits with humanity. And for this and so many other reasons that every technology has been building on the prior technology, AI will unquestionably be the biggest of these waves, more impactful even than the internet was. On the need for AI development to be open-source It is so critical because we’re embedding knowledge, embedding values, embedding understanding into those underlying models, large language models and every aspect that happens. It must be open, and this is part of what I think is critical about us being together here today. We need to be creating trusted, open, useful AI that we can build humanity on. On the need for Christians to help build AI systems We have to show up as the faith community to be influencing those outcomes, because remember what happened in the social media. We didn’t show up, and look at what we got. So are we going to miss this opportunity for something that’s far more important than social networking with AI? Where it truly in the models embeds every aspect of human history and values into it? We have to show up, team. What we do with large language models is far more important because truly we are choosing how we embody knowledge of all time into those underlying models. They need to be open. They need to be trusted. What Christians must bring to the process If we’re going to show up to influence AI broadly, we have to show up with good engineering, good data, good understanding, good frameworks. How do you measure things like ‘Is that leading to better character? Is that leading to better relationships? Is that creating better vocational outcomes? Is that a valid view of a spiritual perspective?’ We need good underlying data associated with each one of these. And for that we’re actively involved. We’re driving to create that underlying data set. Because we need to show up with good data if we’re going to influence how AI is created. How should this work? For the AI systems we need to create good benchmarks. If I ask about God, does it give me a good answer or not? If I ask about relationships with my children, does it give me good answers? We need to create the corpus of data to give good answers to those questions. And, armed with that good data, we need to show up to influence the total landscape of AI. We want to benchmark OpenAI. We’re going to benchmark Gemini. We’re going to benchmark Claude. We’re going to benchmark Copilot. This is what we’re going to do at Gloo, but we want to be part of a broader community in that discussion so that we’re influential in creating flourishing AI. Technology is a force for good. AI that truly embeds the values that we care about, that we want to honour, that we want to be representing into the future and benchmarking across all of them. Oh his role with Gloo We are going to change the landscape of the faith community and its role in shaping this most critical technology, AI, for faith and flourishing. That’s what we’re going to do at Gloo and we need all of your help and partnership to do so because if we don’t hang together, we’re not going to influence the outcome, right? ‘Here am I, Lord’ I don’t think I’m done. … You and I both need to come to the same position like Isaiah did. Here am I, Lord. Send me. Send me. Send us. That we can be shaping technology as a force for good. That we could grab this moment in time. This is the greatest time to live in human history. We’re going to solve diseases. We’re going to improve lives. We’re going to educate every person in poverty. We are going to solve climate issues. We are going to be using these technologies to improve the lives of every human on the planet. We are going to shape technology as a force for good. Here am I, Lord. Send me. ••• Story: Jim Killam, Wycliffe Global Alliance Translated with ChatGPT. How was the translation accuracy? Let us know at info@wycliffe.net. Alliance organisations are welcome to download and use images from this series.
Read more