The International House Trust supports the Hackney Migrant Centre by providing an English teacher to run lessons at the Centre. The
Centre is a charity which provides a weekly drop in session for
refugees and other migrants offering legal aid and health advice, a free
meal and an inclusive, sociable meeting place.
Ben
Darby, a teacher from IH London who runs these classes, has been
blogging about some of the differences between his teaching at IH London and at the Hackney Migrant Centre.
In his latest post, Ben discusses the growth of classes at the centre and new opportunities to students to take formal tests.
The Centre's new two hour class on Friday afternoons, running in addition to the Wednesday
class, has been running since February 2011. At first the class focused more on literacy and initially had a lower attendance rate
than Wednesdays but numbers have steadily risen and the class is currently
geared towards OCR English tests. The Wednesday class is often full to capacity
(13 students) and the Hackney Migrant Centre has seen an increase in the number
of people using its services. This is partly because the reputation of the
centre has spread through word of mouth and is also due to government cuts
beginning to bite. For example, free ESOL lessons at F.E. colleges are no
longer available and several organisations offering legal advice to migrants
have folded due to lack of funding.
Lessons on Wednesday focus on
language which the students can use in practical situations. Many of them want
to get a UK driving license but are struggling with the theory exam so we’ve
practised the vocabulary of driving. I’ve introduced grammar presentations to
these lessons because ESOL materials, such as Skills for Life, offer little
explanation of how grammar is structured. This increased emphasis on structure
has gone down well.
In feedback students said
they would like to take formal tests which awarded certificates they could show
the Home Office so we decided to start running OCR tests on Friday afternoons.
OCR is the Oxford, Cambridge and RSA examining board and the test is in three
parts; speaking, reading and writing. We started with the level one speaking
test and all the candidates passed. These tests are accredited by Crisis,
another charity which IH supports. This was arranged by Jagtar Behal of Crisis
and I am very grateful for all his support and advice.
Plans for the future are to
continue running the Wednesday drop in English class and to use Fridays for
lessons which are oriented towards the OCR Esol tests.
