Rebecca Tully: Forced Migrants' Language Learning

Who took part?

Seven people shared their experience with me. I met them through friends, colleagues, colleges and community organisations. They have all been in the UK for more than two years, after being forced to leave their country. All of them had studied English too - in Further Education Colleges, or Community Organisations, or Training and Employment Organisations. Most of them came to a group meeting to help me work out appropriate questions about how they had learnt, and all of them answered the same eight questions in an interview that took about forty-five minutes. These were the questions:

Interview Questions:

Tell me about your network map. Home situation, important English speakers, etc.
When on your timeline did you learn most? Can you say why?
Was there anything in particular that helped you learn? Particular newspaper, video, programme? Can you tell me about it?
How important were other people in your learning? Groups, teacher, someone in particular? Why were they important?
Did you have to learn about culture alongside language? What came first? How did you go about learning it?
How important is your first language to maintain your identity? Do you think this has ever made it harder to learn another language?
When you were learning in class, what opportunities did you have to practice what you'd learned?
What parts of your learning have you controlled, inside and outside the classroom? Has this affected your learning do you think?

Network Map

I asked everyone to draw a 'map' of everyone that helped them to learn English. Write your name in the middle of the page and draw lines out from it. Write the name of the person, where you met them and how they helped you learn. Like this:

Image of network map