Evening program serves adult workers

The ELI’s Evening Program continues to attract adult learners from diverse backgrounds –– including permanent residents, temporary workers at local companies, au pairs living with American families, research scholars at UD and others who find the twice-weekly schedule a good fit for their lifestyle.

For Fernanda Traldi, a research scholar in animal and food science, the nineweek evening language classes solved an unanticipated problem.

“I thought I would learn English by just living here,” she said. Instead, Traldi, who arrived in March, found herself rooming with two other Brazilian colleagues with little chance to improve her English.

“I want to know English well because in Brazil we need it for our jobs,” she explained. Unwilling to return to Brazil without better English skills, she enrolled in the Evening Program in May.

“I’m learning a lot of grammar,” she said, smiling.

In contrast, living with an American family and taking care of their two small children provided Merili Mottus of Estonia with plenty of opportunities to hone her English skills. She joined the Evening Program, she said, to satisfy the education requirement of her sponsoring agency, Culture Care.

According to the agency’s Wilmington-area coordinator, Susan Morris, au pairs must take six credit hours of coursework at an accredited school.While they make take classes in any subject, half of her au pairs choose to study English in ELI’s Evening Program.

“They want to improve their English,” she said. “They like the convenience of classes offered at night, and they want to take a class at a college, to experience an American college setting.”

Now in its eighth year, the Evening Program, coordinated by Walt Babich, offers classes in both written and oral skills four times a year between September and June. For more information, contact Laurie Fuhrmann, Admissions, at (302) 831-2674 or go to www.udel.edu/eli and click on “Programs.”   • BM

Students in the evening program with their teacher Lia Johannes (third from left)