STUDENTS at Orange Anglican Grammar School are learning pidgin English ahead of a trip to the Solomon Islands this year.
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The group of 15 and 16-year-olds will visit the Sir Dudley Tuti College in Isabel for two weeks in the September/October school holidays.
Orange Anglican Grammar School principal Len Elliott said the visit and language lessons was also about building the relationship between Orange Anglican Grammar School and Holy Trinity.
“The school’s view is to provide opportunities for the students to practise values such as respect and work in a practical way in a biblical context,” Mr Elliott said.
“The kids will be doing some fundraising to finance the trip and to raise funds to serve the community in Isabel,”
Holy Trinity Anglican Church rector reverend Mal Dunnett is teaching the students how to speak pidgin English ahead of the trip with Lyn Aitkens who worked as a nurse with the church in Papua New Guinea for 20 years.
“There will be several [language] session in coming months,” he said.
The lessons will help the students understand the culture and communicate with the other students and community members in the Solomon Islands.
“It’s also to show respect of the culture, the kids over there won’t want to talk pidgin, they will want to speak conversational English,” Mr Dunnett said.
Mr Dunnett said the visit was also about building a relationship between the Bathurst diocese and the Anglican diocese of Isabel while developing the students’ leadership skills and community involvement.
“The kids are getting a lot in working over there talking with locals, experiencing the culture and building relationships with kids in a school in a developing nation,” Mr Dunnett said.
“It’s a developing nation, in terms of the United Nations they are in the bottom third in terms of literature and numeracy, it’s a subsistence culture.
“Our students will be working in classrooms of between 47 to 65 students.
tanya.marschke@fairfaxmedia.com.au