The outsiders

How do you teach English to asylum seekers and refugees?

The outsiders

How do you teach English to asylum seekers and refugees?

One of the biggest problems for the thousands of refugees and asylum seekers that come to Britain and Ireland every year is language. Many are from countries where English is neither spoken nor taught. However, success in their new lives - interviews for residence, social-service applications, housing - will depend on them speaking and writing English well. A priority, then, on arrival is to find classes and a good teacher.

Teaching refugees or asylum seekers is one of the greatest challenges that a TEFL teacher can take on. It needs dedication, lots of patience and gives little or no financial reward. Yet, every year a large number of teachers ignore these difficulties and get involved, most by making contact with a local body that organises courses.

The quality of courses varies greatly. In the worst case scenario a teacher is given half a room, a large, poorly-graded class and paper to write on instead of a blackboard. In better-funded associations a teacher might expect to teach a well-balanced group in a comfortable classroom. Some organisations also provide 'outreach' programmes; here teachers visit the houses of refugees or asylum seekers to help them with their English on a one-to-one basis.

Anne is typical of many that teach in the sector. She works in a language school in the day with mainly Western European students, and then teaches asylum seekers as a volunteer in the evening. Asked about the contrast she shakes her head. They are, she says, "different worlds". Most importantly, her asylum-seeker classes tend to have students from far more varied backgrounds. A class that she is teaching now includes two Angolans, a Nigerian, two students from Zaire, four East Europeans (ethnic Russians from Lithuania and Estonia), two Algerians, a Palestinian and an Iranian. The professional background of students also varies greatly. One teacher I met taught a class that included farmers, soldiers, doctors, construction workers, university teachers and an ex-government minister.

This diversity causes problems at different levels. But most importantly it means that students are used to different styles of learning. Many refugees or asylum seekers have had poor or zero schooling. Others, especially from Eastern Europe, have a level of schooling that would put lots of Britons to shame. The first group favours a communicative approach with practical examples and role-plays. The second group demands systematic grammatical explanations. It can be very difficult to balance these needs.

Refugee or asylum-seeker classes also tend to have far more students with special requirements than normal language-school classes. Sometimes these requirements are physical: a war-crippled Bosnian, for example, who cannot climb a set of stairs to get into the classroom. Sometimes they are psychological, the result of a difficult past.

However, at other times these requirements relate specifically to language. For example, a student whose mother tongue is a Creole English that is almost unintelligible to a Briton, or another student who has never learnt to read, as her native language has no written form. Problems like these present real difficulties for teacher and student alike, and often the only way to deal with them is to spend extra time together before or after the lesson.

Given the spectrum of backgrounds and needs found in an immigrant class, conventional textbooks are almost useless. They can be mined for exercises. But as the basis for a course they are definitely lacking. (Articles on buying a car, throwing a party or going on a honeymoon can leave students cold and bewildered.) It is often left to the teacher to produce his or her own material.

So how do you go about designing a course? "I believe in teaching them what they tell me they need," says Sally from Dublin. In her view the student's experience should determine the syllabus. For example, students say that they have to look for housing, to deal with abuse or to apply for jobs. The teacher can then recreate these circumstances in class or find exercises that relate to them.

The average student responds very well to this approach, as his or her life is full of these kinds of problems. But, the word 'problems' points to another of the dimensions of working with refugees or asylum seekers. The teacher is often one of the few friendly figures in the life of a student that speaks English. As a result teachers can easily find themselves drawn into the refugee's world, writing letters to officialdom, visiting landlords and negotiating with the Social Services. It can be a rewarding, frustrating and extremely time-consuming experience.

Most institutions offer few guidelines about teaching asylum seekers or refugees. One unspoken rule is that teachers should not ask too much about the past. Many students have come from extremely difficult situations in their own country that they might not want to discuss in a lesson. There is also the added need to be sensitive about potential conflicts within the class. I once asked two Romanians to describe their homeland only to find that one belonged to Transylvania's long-suffering Hungarian minority. They seemed to be talking (or at times shouting) about two very different countries. These kinds of problems are especially acute when a teacher has students from different ethnic communities in the Balkans and Central Africa.

There are paid and voluntary jobs teaching asylum seekers and refugees. In Britain the Refugee Council or local education authorities and Learning and Skills Councils can all be contacted. In Ireland the main co-ordinator is the Irish Refugee Council. Even TEFL teachers based on the Continent can work in the sector. The high status of English there means that asylum seekers and refugees in Italy, France, Spain and other European countries are keen to learn English too.

The Refugee Council: Information Team, 3 Bondway, London, SW8 1SJ
Tel: 0207 820 3085

Refugee Women's Association: Print House, 18 Ashwin Road, London E8 3DL
Tel: 01719232412

Irish Refugee Council: 40, Lower Dominick Street, Dublin 1
Tel: (+353 1) 873 00 42/(+353 1) 872 44 24
Fax: (+353 1) 873 00 88

Learning and Skills Councils Public Enquiry Unit
Tel: 0171 925 5555