Wednesday, September 24, 2003

Griffin Tech pioneered ESL classes in Fayette

This letter is in response to your reporter J. Frank Lynch's article entitled, "Local church leads the way with English outreach to immigrants." His story was about the English as a Second Language (ESL) program at the First Baptist Church in Fayetteville.

Mr. Lynch wrote, "There are plenty of adults in Fayette County and nearby communities who desire to know the language better; until recently, they had to go out of the county to find ESL programs."

Their ESL classes are clearly very helpful to new immigrants; however, they are not the only classes, nor were they the first. Griffin Technical College has been servicing the foreign community in Fayette County for over 15 years.

To give you an idea of the size of our program in Fayette County, this last school year, we had 327 ESL students from 31 countries that spoke 18 different languages. Sixty-one percent were from Central and South America, 27 percent from Asia, 11 percent from Europe and 1 percent from Africa. We offer classes free of charge in the morning or evening at two different locations. We have eight teachers that teach all levels of English as well as a class specifically for writing and another for pronunciation.

The Citizen has printed articles over the years covering our various programs. John Munford, another reporter from your paper, has attended a picnic-awards program for our ESL students.

We help sponsor events such asthe Annual Hispanic Celebration. Four of our students are chairing various committees and all of our Spanish-speaking students will be actively involved in the festivities on Oct. 4 at the city hall in Peachtree City.

We want the students to be able to enrich their lives by learning the English language and the American culture butalso want them to feel they are part of an international community.

We invite anyone wanting to improve their English to join our classes at any time.We understand that many area churches are involved in positive outreach programs to immigrants in Fayette County and we applaud their efforts.

In addition to assisting foreign adults, we help those who have dropped out of high school obtain their General Educational Development (GED). Although Fayette County has a low dropout rate, as compared to the rest of Georgia, we still had 232 GED students. This past school year our county had 79 graduates from the GED program. Interested persons may call 770-487-8910 for our schedule.

Peter R. Volin

Griffin Technical College

Fayette County