ESOL classes are often the first step towards a new life
Channel 4’s recent series about immigrants learning English – Why Don’t You Speak English? – made me think about the barriers my own mother faced when my family moved to this country, almost 30 years ago, and the impact her English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) courses had on us.
My parents and I moved from Belgium to England in 1984, when I was five and a half years old. My father spoke English, my mother spoke Japanese and I spoke French. I was enrolled at the local infant school, my mother attended ESOL classes at the local college and we often ended up doing our homework together, with my father’s help. Within a year, I was fluent in English and excelling at school. For my mother, however, the story was very different.
I recall the howls of frustration when my mother would realise whilst cooking, that yet again, she’d mistaken the picture on the label and bought a tin of plums instead of tomatoes. I remember having to write out her cheques whenever we went shopping. I recollect how, as a child, I would have to talk to people when they couldn’t understand my mother and how they would talk to me as if she wasn’t there. And I remember wondering, somewhat impatiently, when she would learn how to speak and write ‘properly’, whilst apologising for her broken English. Shame on me!
Now, I understand how hard it was for her to learn a new language, in a new country. How hard she worked to pick it up, learn the odd colloquialisms, understand the different accents and master the inconsistent spellings. How hard it must have been for her to keep finding the motivation to persevere when it just didn’t seem like she was progressing. When I asked her what kept her going, she told me that it was because she wanted to be able to have conversations with me, to help me as I grew up and to not get left behind. She has certainly met her goals and then some. My mother has taught Japanese at a university for almost 20 years and has been the Chair of the British Association for Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language for the past 3 years. She is also a fantastic mother and wife. Needless to say my father and I are immensely proud of my mother and her achievements.
My family has learned, first hand, the importance and the impact of adult education and ESOL – both as individuals and as a family unit. It’s something that’s highlighted on a daily basis through my work at NIACE and that we hope will be clearly evidenced when the NIACE-led Family Learning Inquiry reports in October.
The classes my mother attended gave her the first step towards a new life. It gave her the ability to feel connected to her family, engage in her community, make friends, get a job and live a rounded, independent life. Through adult education and ESOL, she has changed her own life and changed the lives of many other people around her. These are the reasons NIACE strives to make the case for ESOL provision and why we’re anxiously awaiting further details of the funding for benefit claimants with ESOL needs announced in the Spending Review.
