Update from the Hackney Migrant Centre

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.

Meeting the challenge of teaching English to speakers of other languages

The International House Trust has been supporting 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.

Since Ben's last post at the beginning of the year, a further class on Friday afternoons has been established and he's been discovering just how different teaching ESOL can be to his other work.

"At IH London I teach English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). These classes are for paying, well-educated students and there are many course books available. At the Migrant Centre I teach English as a Second or Other Language (ESOL). These classes are for migrants who are trying to settle in Britain. The students are often poor and under-educated. Some have problems reading and writing in their own languages. But these aren’t the only differences between classes at IH and Hackney. As I’ve been discovering, there are far fewer teaching materials available for ESOL. I’ve been using a course designed by the government called Skills for Life. It is very different to EFL course books. For example, there isn’t so much text on each page so it isn’t overwhelming for students with low levels of literacy. The focus is on practical everyday English more than on grammar and the topics covered are more appropriate to the students and avoid the emphasis on Western, middle class lifestyles which is so common in EFL course books.

We’ve covered the first level of Skills for Life. But the students at the Migrant Centre aren’t ready for Level 2 yet. So I needed to find out more about developing ESOL teaching materials. Last month I visited Crisis, another charity which IH is supporting, and spoke to some of their ESOL teachers. They showed me ways of adapting EFL course books and of reformulating Skills for Life resources and they stressed the importance of responding to the students in a flexible and improvisational way. I have also been using a revamped version of a Skills for Life unit, which my colleague Jacqueline McKewan produced as part of her MA in Linguistics. I have also had help from classroom assistants, volunteers from the centre, who give weaker students extra support, particularly with literacy issues.

So, teaching ESOL in Hackney is very different to EFL classes at IH. Sometimes it feels a bit like having to re-invent the wheel each time I prepare a lesson, but it is an interesting challenge and one which has made me rethink the way I teach lower levels at IH. Do EFL students benefit from such text-heavy course books, for example?

The students continue to be keen and supportive of one another and it is a pleasure working with them. At a time when ESOL classes are under threat from government cuts it is good that the HMC and IH are able to continue to provide these lessons. The next objective is to try to increase the class size, particularly the new Friday lesson which tends to have lower attendance. I’ll keep you informed of our progress."

Get resources about English for speakers of other languages and Skills for Life and find out how you can access ESOL services near you.

Ben Darby, IH London’s English teacher who is currently working at Hackney Migrant Centre, gives us his first update of the New Year.

“In my last post I mentioned that the students in the English class at the Hackney Migrant Centre were very keen to have more lessons. So it’s great news that from this Friday - with the support of International House - the Centre will open an additional class. This will be an extension of the Wednesday lesson, open to the same students and building on the same syllabus.

The English class will take place in the same venue, St Mary’s Church. It will be a little different from Wednesdays as there won’t be the other services that the Centre usually offers (legal and health advice, as well as lunch provided by local business). This has one advantage in that we will have more rooms available and so will be able to use a more comfortable (and warmer!) space than the room above the vestry.

By doubling the provision of English classes we hope that the students will be able to make faster progress on the ‘Skills for Life’ syllabus. ‘Skills for Life’ is a literacy project organised by the government which produces teaching materials suitable for the needs of migrants settling in the UK. The students have now successfully progressed to the second level of this course. So, all in all, a good start to the year at the Hackney Migrant Centre.”

Read more about English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) and find out how you can access ESOL services.

Teaching English at the Hackney Migrant Centre

As well as funding Jagtar's teaching position at homeless charity Crisis, the International House Trust also supports the Hackney Migrant Centre in East London. Here IH London teacher Ben Darby is busy teaching English to asylum seekers, refugees and migrants.

Read Ben's first update from the Centre to find out what he's been doing and the important role the Hackney Migrant Centre plays in the community:

"I teach English at International House London. Since September I have also been teaching English at one of the charities which International House is helping to support; the Hackney Migrant Centre.

The Migrant Centre is a charity that runs a weekly 'drop-in' for asylum seekers, refugees and migrants. It is based at St Mary’s Church by Clissold Park in Stoke Newington on Wednesday afternoons.

It is an inspiring project. Staffed mostly by volunteers it offers excellent support services and a welcoming and sociable environment. Legal advisors help with immigration, welfare and housing problems. Lunch is cooked with food donated by local businesses. The centre is unique in Hackney as it offers these services to all migrants, regardless of nationality or immigration status.

The centre has been running since 2008 and in 2010 International House offered their support. In June 2010 International House started providing teachers to the centre, enabling them to run a two-hour English class every Wednesday.

English lessons are held in a room above the vestry, with the church windows as a backdrop. There are basic facilities: a portable whiteboard and a CD player. The class size averages ten.

The majority of the students are African, mostly from Eritrea. Many are refugees, not all of them have been granted leave to remain in the UK, and some have been homeless. We focus on practical, day to day language. Recently we’ve been looking at topics related to transport, for example asking for information about buses or trains, vocabulary for topping up an Oyster card, and how to ask for directions.

There’s a lot of role play and because some of the students have difficulty with written English we’ve practised tasks such as composing an email and filling in forms. The students are co-operative and very supportive of one another. They have said that they are keen to have more English lessons. International House and the Hackney Migrant Centre are currently looking for ways to try to increase the amount of English classes."

- Ben Darby

Look out for more news from Ben at the Hackney Migrant Centre in 2011.