CELPIP Reading Part 4 Practice Test: Moving Newcomer Language Classes Online

Demand has outgrown the converted Mercer Street school where the Ridgeford Newcomer Centre offers free English instruction to permanent residents and refugees. Roughly 900 adults await placement, beginners for an average of eight months. In November, the board will vote on moving two-thirds of classes online, reserving in-person instruction chiefly for literacy learners and those lacking reliable internet.

Executive director Hana Mirzaei, who drafted the plan, unapologetically prioritizes accessibility. “Every month of waiting is a month in which someone can’t decipher a lease, consult a child’s teacher or apply for employment above minimum wage,” she points out. A classroom accommodates eighteen people. A virtual class reaches learners in three towns without bus fares. Mirzaei concedes that online study demands considerable self-discipline. “But an imperfect class beats a seat nobody can reach.”

Instructor Paolo Ferreira, at the centre for eleven years, calls the waiting list indefensible but doubts the plan will shorten it as promised. “Those who drift away from online courses are precisely the learners we most need: older adults, people unfamiliar with laptops, and students whose children monopolize the household’s only device.” Language, he argues, is not merely vocabulary but “the nerve to stumble in front of others and carry on,” something no muted microphone cultivates. He would prefer renting evening space in public libraries.

Learners’ verdicts are mixed. Amara Diallo, who arrived from Guinea last year with two preschoolers, credits online classes as the only reason she can attend. “Yet I’ve spoken more English at the playground than in my virtual class, where breakout rooms frequently fall silent,” she adds.

Derek Lunn, whose food-processing plant employs dozens of recent immigrants, values content above format: general classes seldom cover the vocabulary of safety briefings and shift meetings. He has offered to host lessons at the plant if the centre supplies an instructor, accommodating workers too exhausted after ten-hour shifts for either format. Mirzaei calls the offer generous but notes that the centre’s funding agreement restricts it to classes open to the general public.

Ferreira wants attendance figures from last year’s online pilot released before the vote; Mirzaei has agreed.

As someone who learned English in a church basement twenty years ago, I read this article with mixed feelings. Nobody can justify making people wait 6. Choose…the better part of a yearover two yearseleven yearsa matter of weeks for a beginner class, so I understand Ms. Mirzaei’s urgency, and I would not want her plan scrapped entirely.

Still, I share Mr. Ferreira’s worry that the people who 7. Choose…join from three townswork long ten-hour shiftsfade out of virtual classesteach evening classes in libraries are the very ones the centre exists to serve. Ms. Diallo’s remark about 8. Choose…learning from homethe cost of commutingclasses in public librariessilent breakout rooms says it all: sitting in a virtual room is not the same as conversing. I was also surprised that the centre has not yet 9. Choose…answered Mr. Lunn’s offerpublished its pilot datameasured its waiting listset a date for the vote. Finally, if the funding agreement 10. Choose…forbids teaching onlinecaps classes at eighteen learnersbars classes for one employermakes learners pay their bus fare, perhaps it is the agreement that needs changing, not the workers.