NEWS & BLOG

There are over 300 languages spoken in London, more than any other city in the world. 45 languages are spoken at our centre alone. Yet traditionally refugee support groups in the city choose – well-meaningly – to focus on teaching English to those they support, rather than considering what we can learn linguistically from our community members and from the many languages already spoken locally. Given how essential a good understanding of English is for people’s everyday lives and ability to survive in their new country, this typical focus on English teaching is completely understandable, but for a while now we have been pondering how we can celebrate the wonderfully huge variety of languages spoken in our multi-lingual community and local neighbourhoods.

A few weeks ago we talked to some of our refugee and asylum-seeking English students about how they would feel about becoming teachers for a lesson, teaching their fellow students and usual teachers some basic words and phrases in their first languages. We were thrilled that they immediately said yes, and away we went.

This past week we invited in some guests, all members of our Welcome Circle of supporters, to join our lessons and participate in a student-teacher-swapped class. Our usual English teachers, staff, students, and guests had a fantastic time learning basic Arabic, Turkish, Ukrainian, Farsi and Creole from five of our community members. Critically, our new teachers were careful not to speak any English (to clear up confusion or answer questions) while teaching, since their own typical learning experience doesn’t involve them speaking in their own first language. By the end of the lesson, we had all mastered some basic words and phrases, and everyone appreciated just how difficult it is to learn a new language!

Teacher swapping has been a great leveller for our community. Our usual English teachers and staff have been placed in the shoes of our usual students, who arrive in the UK typically speaking very limited English and expected to learn it incredibly quickly in order to survive in their everyday lives. Particularly when someone is experiencing trauma, poverty and multiple huge life events including suddenly moving across the world away from loved ones, learning a new language – especially one as difficult as English – is not easy and takes time. Our community has a newfound appreciation of the high expectations on new language learning that Britain has for new arrivals still coming to terms with the war, persecution, oppression or violence they have experienced.

Most importantly, our students becoming teachers flips who has power in our centre, creating confidence in our community members that they can teach as well as learn. This experimental classroom structure, which we want to try embedding into our teaching activities more regularly, forms part of our ongoing efforts to run our space with our community members in ways that are horizontal, which also includes hiring those we support as staff  and them running or co-running various activities as volunteers. And how genuinely fun and interesting it is for all of us!