TESOL Graduates First Students
Dec 16, 2008
Cornerstone University is celebrating a milestone in one of its programs that will have implications for missions work at home and abroad.
The university's new Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages master's degree program just graduated its first students. According to Michael Pasquale, associate professor of linguistics, "There were 15 in this first graduating class. There were students from Mexico, Dominican Republic and South Korea. We have a graduate, after graduation, who packed up his family and moved to Mexico as missionaries."
Pasquale views this as a service to missionaries in the field. "The program is designed to be primarily online, so we can have missionaries take the program from all over the world. They could fit it into their already-busy schedules."
According to Pasquale, this is a great need. "In any mission field around the world, it seems like English is a key component for missionary outreach, and we see that growing and not slowing down. And even if you think about English-speaking countries, we're seeing many immigrants coming into those communities wanting to learn English as well."
The TESOL program also helps prepare teachers to share their faith in a teaching environment.
-article courtesy of mnnonline.org