Latest News

A selection of language-related news. Does not claim to be comprehensive or represent the views of SCILT.


Migration

Glasgow school's mission to help families break down language barriers

21 June 2023 (Glasgow Times)

A Glasgow secondary school where 35 different languages are spoken by pupils and their families held a successful pilot for a new Saturday morning club.

Rosshall Academy on the Southside of the city offered parents an ESOL (English as a Second or Other Language) workshop as part of Refugee Festival Scotland Week.

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MTOT 2022-23 and Voices of Hope

16 June 2023 (SCILT)

Finalists' work from this year's MTOT competition can now be viewed on the SCILT website.

As part of our Mother Tongue Other Tongue poetry competition, SCILT received several entries from young Ukrainian refugees displaced by the war in Ukraine. We wanted the world to be able to access these wonderfully creative and emotive pieces of writing. Our Voices of Hope online exhibition, in partnership with AUGB, will be launched on 21 June as part of Refugee Week Scotland 2023 and will be available on SCILT's website following the launch event.

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Esol English classes are crucial for migrant integration, yet challenges remain unaddressed

15 May 2023 (The Conversation)

In the year ending September 2022, more than 70,000 people had claimed asylum in the UK. The vast majority were from countries that do not use English as a first language.

Being able to communicate in English is essential for newly arrived migrants. People who have gone through traumatic experiences are, understandably, often desperate to build new lives. They want to use the skills and knowledge they have to access work and education. To do that, they have to navigate the health, social security, housing and education systems.

Language is the single most important area that can promote integration for migrants. My research has shown that language teachers are uniquely placed to positively affect the lives of people in these situations.

In fact, the 2016 Casey review, a government-commissioned report on the state of social cohesion in Britain, highlighted that developing fluency in English is critical to integration.

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How schools and teachers can make refugee children feel welcome

11 May 2023 (The Conversation)

Teachers in the UK are welcoming children seeking sanctuary into their classrooms. In 2022, 46,000 young people aged under 18 arrived in the UK from Ukraine. More than 5,000 asylum applications were made by unaccompanied children in 2022.

Studies have shown that teachers can feel ill-equipped or may not receive formal training to meet the needs of these new arrivals in their classrooms.

In a range of research projects, my colleagues and I have explored teachers’ approaches to welcoming refugee children. We found that by taking specific steps to create an inclusive school environment, schools and teachers can provide a place where a newly arrived child can feel safe and able to trust the adults in their community.

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Caitlin learned Ukrainian to welcome her friend to Monifieth High – and won poetry competition

4 May 2023 (Dundee Courier)

When Caitlin Anderson, 14, was asked to look after a Ukrainian refugee joining her school it was the start of a special friendship.

As Caitlin helped Veronika Raziievska, also 14, improve her English and settle into her new surroundings, she decided she should make the effort to learn her language.

And as well as making Veronika’s new life at Monifieth High School a little easier, that resulted in Caitlin winning a national competition for a poem she subsequently wrote in Ukrainian.

When she entered the Mother Tongue Other Tongue contest, Caitlin told Veronika’s story to raise awareness of what she and other refugees had endured as a result of the war in Ukraine.

We met the S2 pupils to hear about their friendship and how that resulted in Caitlin’s award-winning poem.

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Ukraine: Refugee children learn Welsh in 11 weeks

16 December 2022 (BBC)

A group of Ukrainian children have been learning Welsh to help settle into life in the country.

More than 1,000 miles away from home they have been welcomed with open arms into their communities on Anglesey.

After 11 weeks, Natalia, nine, is almost fluent. She comes from Odessa, a city that has borne the brunt of some of the most fierce fighting, and she said she loves Welsh.

Her and her friends' grasp of the language has been called "astounding".

Sofiia, Natalia and Danylo have all been attending a specialist Welsh immersion unit at Ysgol Moelfre every day since September.

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The donated building keeping Ukrainians connected to home

11 December 2022 (BBC)

Ukrainian refugees have opened a new cultural centre in East Renfrewshire to give people a place to stay in touch with their community and traditions.

The Church of Scotland donated the space in church grounds in Clarkston.

The Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain (AUGB) will use it to teach English, as well as for activities like art, music and cooking.

More than 20,000 Ukrainians have come to Scotland under the government's super sponsor scheme.

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Arabic lessons: 'It's respectful, the Irish people learning my language'

5 December 2022 (BBC)

"I find it respectful that the Irish students are learning my language."

These are the words of Mohammad. He is 14 years old and moved from Syria to Northern Ireland in 2019.

In school, his Northern Irish friends come up to him and speak to him in Arabic, greeting him with "Marhaba (hello)", "Sabah alkhaer (good morning)," and "How are you (kifak)?"

English-speaking students in Sacred Heart College Omagh, County Tyrone, are learning his native language as part of a five-week online course.

Pauline McAnea, a language teacher, said the main motivation for wanting her students to take part in the course was due to an increase in Syrian students who have attended the school in recent years.

"It is important for us to show that we respect them and their language and culture," she said.

"They have made such an effort to learn our language so it is important that we reach out and make a bit of an effort to learn theirs."

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‘They can really fly’: how to teach a refugee child

27 April 2022 (The Guardian)

Children arriving from war-torn countries such as Ukraine often thrive in their new school and go on to be successful. How do teachers do it?

"Children pick up whether someone cares about them even if they don’t speak the language,” says Kulvarn Atwal, a headteacher in east London. Atwal, who has plenty of experience of welcoming children who are refugees from conflict, is preparing for the arrival of new pupils from Ukraine.

Children connect with each other much faster than adults do, he says. “Sometimes we look at children through the eyes of adults, but they don’t see what adults see. They haven’t developed discriminatory biases so they just dive straight in.”

As the summer term begins, many schools are preparing to welcome children who have fled Ukraine after the Russian invasion. For some schools, particularly in rural areas, it could be their first experience of teaching refugees.

Atwal has told his local council he will take “as many Ukrainian children as possible”, to Uphall primary, his school in Ilford, where 60 languages are spoken, to make use of the school’s experience. He says he also wanted “to send an important message to our children that we are doing something”.

For children who arrive speaking no English, often after traumatic experiences, starting a new school in a new country is daunting. But they typically go on to thrive. The education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, himself arrived aged nine from Iraq speaking no English. How do teachers manage to help such children to adapt and make progress?

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Barcelona’s pro-mother tongue project that inverts the classic rule of migration

20 April 2022 (The Guardian)

Every immigrant knows that the key to integration is learning the language of their new country. For many the language they brought with them is simply a relic of their former life.

In Barcelona, a project is turning that on its head with the philosophy that no one arrives in a host country empty-handed. They may not yet have a job or much of an education, they may even be staying illegally, but they have a language – often more than one.

Since 2020, the Prollema (pro-llengua materna, or pro-mother tongue) project has been helping those from north and west Africa gain confidence by helping them teach their mother tongue, the Berber – or Amazigh – languages, as well as Darija, Fula and Wolof.

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Ukrainian resources for schools and families

5 April 2022 (SCILT)

We have collated resources to help support children and families arriving from Ukraine. We hope teachers will find these useful in welcoming young people and their parents into Scottish schools. Please share with your networks!

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‘You’ve got friends’: Birmingham school scheme aims to ease refugee trauma

27 March 2022 (The Guardian)

A pioneering programme hopes to support children newly arrived in the UK until they can integrate into classrooms.

Many of the pupils who arrive in Gemma Patel’s classroom at Birmingham’s City academy don’t speak.

“When students first come to us, they often don’t talk, they don’t communicate,” she said during a break from teaching a lesson on verbs. “It’s not because they can’t, but because they haven’t necessarily felt able to before.”

She is the assistant head of Core Hello, a pioneering programme set up by the Core Education Trust in September 2021 for newly arrived refugee and migrant children who need extra support settling in to school life in the UK.

Over 12 weeks, pupils are taught basic survival language skills, taken on trips into the city centre to help with cultural acclimatisation, and are given support for any trauma they may have experienced, before returning to mainstream school.

The trust has taken on a number of pupils who came to the UK after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan last year, and said it was open to hosting Ukrainian refugees.

“It’s not just language that’s the barrier, it’s dealing with everything that they’ve gone through. Just moving and resettling is very traumatic for young people, let alone maybe coming from a country which is unsettled or has experienced war,” said Rekha Shell-Macleod, the head of school at City academy. “But we’ve found with Core Hello, in a short period of time they make the progress that in a normal school setting may take a year or two.”

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How to Talk About Migrations? A competition for primary and secondary Scottish schools

4 March 2022 (Migration in Education)

We invite pupils and teachers to participate in this exciting competition that explores how we teach and learn about migration — creatively and with empathy. We live in a world that sees many people on the move, and our pupils may have been part of these experiences themselves. In schools, migration may make the topic of creative projects and classroom activities — a unique opportunity for pupils to learn from each other and about each other.

Through this competition, we want to bring forward the best and most creative ideas on teaching and learning about migrations in Scottish schools. We would like to hear about your teaching activities/practices and/or activities that may enable conversations about migration in schools – from language learning, literature, history, to personal experiences. The competition aims to acknowledge and make visible the cultural and linguistic diversity of Scottish primary and secondary schools. The purpose of this competition is to explore how to raise awareness and learn about migration, and move conversations beyond narrow and often negative stereotypes. We advocate and understand migration as a multifaceted and omnipresent fact of life, and hope that the submissions for this competition will reflect this vision.

Visit the competition webpage for more information and submit entries by 25 April 2022.

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School competition: How to talk about migrations

16 November 2021 (Migration in Education)

We invite pupils and teachers in primary and secondary schools in Scotland to participate in this exciting competition that explores how we teach and learn about migration — creatively and with empathy. We live in a world that sees many people on the move, and our pupils may have been part of these experiences themselves. In schools, migration may make the topic of creative projects and classroom activities, as a unique opportunity for pupils to learn from each other and about each other.

The competition aims to acknowledge and make visible the cultural and linguistic diversity of Scottish primary and secondary schools. On that basis, submissions could be in English or in other languages to reflect the spirit of the school and of the competition. Teachers or teams of teachers and pupils are invited to submit their best materials that showcase how migration is taught in their respective schools. 

Visit the website for more information and submit entries by Friday 17 December 2021.

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5 ways immigrant parents support children’s home language learning

20 September 2021 (The Conversation)

It is important to preserve and develop a child’s home language for their cultural, linguistic and social development. Research shows that English plays a dominant role in schools and society at large, while children’s diverse home languages are often marginalized. Languages other than English are often not welcomed or encouraged in classrooms.

Marginalizing languages beyond English in school has negative effects on children and classroom cultures by creating environments that suggest the daily language practices of children whose families speak languages other than English aren’t “good enough.” Unsurprisingly, if children feel unwelcome or disrespected in the classroom, this can adversely affect their learning engagement and academic achievement.

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Stornoway Primary School Boy Wins Gaelic Award Four Years After Arriving From Syria

26 April 2021 (Stornoway Gazette)

A Stornoway Primary School Pupil, whose family moved to Lewis from war-torn Syria, has gone viral this week after receiving an award for the progress he has made in learning Gaelic.

Ten year old Abdullah Al Nakeeb moved to Stornoway from Homs, four years ago. Now in Primary Six, Abdullah has a good grasp of the local language.

The Al Nakeeb family said: “We are really proud of Abdullah, he loves going to school here and Gaelic has become one of his favourite subjects.

"Addullah always works really hard and it is nice to see him get praise for all his efforts.

“We never expected our son to learn the language but since moving here he has managed to pick up Gaelic very quickly.

"His younger brother Majd has also got a good grasp of the language and received a certificate for his progress in December.

“Hopefully Abdullah’s brothers will continue to follow in his footsteps, it would be great to have them all speaking a new language.”

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Be a positive messenger - Homework challenge: Refugees and migrants

17 June 2020 (British Council)

Inspired by Refugee Week’s 20 Simple Acts campaign, we’ve created a homework challenge to help your pupils find out more about the lives of migrants and refugees, show support, and celebrate the contributions they make to societies around the world. The pack offers the chance to explore other cultures and languages.

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Translating for Mum and Dad

9 October 2019 (BBC)

When a family arrives in a new country, often the children are first to pick up the new language - and inevitably, they become the family translators. Researcher Dr Humera Iqbal describes what it's like to be a child responsible for dealing with doctors and landlords, bank staff or restaurant suppliers.

"Baba! Baba!" calls out the driving instructor. Thirteen-year-old Jiawei sits at the back of the car while her dad takes his driving lesson. Father and daughter exchange confused glances, then burst out laughing. The instructor, who has heard this Chinese word during one of Jiawei's father's previous lessons, looks puzzled.

"Doesn't 'baba' mean 'move forward' in Chinese?" he asks.

"No," says Jiawei. "It means 'father'!"

Jiawei was in the unusual position of acting as an interpreter for her dad as he learned to drive. She took notes and repeated in Chinese exactly what the instructor said in English - things like "Turn left at the roundabout," or "Slow down at the junction." She's proud that she helped her father pass his test.

"It was quite fun and I thought I was doing something to help my family," she says, looking back. "I was also learning how to drive myself without knowing it, doing something that other kids didn't get to do."

A year earlier, Jiawei's family had moved from China to the UK and while she had managed to pick up basic English at school, her father was struggling. Jiawei became a crucial link helping him find his way in a new country.

Thousands of migrant children in the UK translate for their families every day. My colleague Dr Sarah Crafter and I have come across child interpreters, some as young as seven, helping their parents communicate in shops, banks, and even police stations. It can be stressful for them, especially when adults are rude or aggressive.

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EAL: Working with new arrivals

12 September 2018 (SecEd)

This September, many secondary schools will have new arrivals from abroad who have English as an additional language. Continuing our series on EAL, Dr Ruth Wilson gives some practical advice for you and your schools in meeting the needs of this diverse group of learners

New arrivals with English as an additional language (EAL) are a very diverse group. Their language proficiency can range from “new to English” to “fluent”. The young person can arrive at any age and with widely different socio-economic and educational backgrounds. Some students may come from an advantaged context with a high standard of education; others may have had little or interrupted schooling or experienced traumatic events. A new arrival could for example be a refugee from a war-torn country or a child of a German banker working in the City of London.

Data show that, on average, pupils arriving late into the English school system do less well in external exams than their first language English peers, and that the older the pupils are when they arrive the less likely they are to achieve good results in year 11 (Hutchinson, 2018).

This article gives some practical advice for you and your schools in meeting the needs of EAL learners who are newly arrived from abroad. 

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Online learning event: Welcoming refugee and migrant children to mainstream classrooms in Europe

27 March 2018 (British Council eTwinning)

Aimed at teachers of primary and secondary learners aged 4-16, this eTwinning workshop will develop teachers' awareness, confidence and skills in learning about refugee issues, welcoming refugee and migrant children to mainstream classrooms from a social and emotional perspective, and will give a basic introduction to language acquisition and the importance of maintaining and developing mother tongue and home culture.

Visit the website to sign up for the course between 9 - 17 April 2018.

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'Don’t speak to me in our language, when you pick me up from school’: Language loss and maintenance in migrant families

18 December 2017 (Bilingualism Matters)

Today, 18th December is the UN Day of Migrants. On this day in 1990 UN signed the International Migrant Convention protecting the rights of migrants and their families. It took another 13 years for the Convention to reach the threshold needed for its implementation – acceptance by 20 countries. Its main aim is to protect human rights of currently around 250 million people identified as migrants world-wide. Not many are aware of this date and not many are aware that UNESCO rights of children include a right to education in mother tongue/home language.

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Six ways to build a supportive, language-rich EAL community

28 August 2017 (TES)

Supporting EAL students is personal to this assistant headteacher. Here she gives her six tips to ensure these students – and their families – get the right assistance.

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Pupils who learn in second language ‘catch up on listening skills within a year'

7 August 2017 (TES)

Seven- and eight-year-olds from immigrant families make faster progress than their native-speaking peers, research shows.

Primary pupils who learn in a language other than the one they speak at home start out with poorer listening and reading skills, but “catch up” with native-speaking peers within one school year, researchers have found.

In a paper in the British Educational Research Journal, researchers from Ghent University in Belgium also looked at how pupils' listening and reading comprehension was affected by the proportion of their classmates who spoke a different language at home.

They found that classes with a greater proportion of non-native-speaking students achieved lower than average results at the start of the year, but by the end of the year this link had "disappeared".

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Refugee Exhibition

26 January 2017 (University of Edinburgh)

Let your senior phase students see a meaningful context in which German is spoken and meet the students who ran the integration project working with refugees in Germany.

The principal aim of the exhibition is to raise awareness, hopefully inspire similar projects and increase learner motivation for those who often don´t see the relevance of learning a language.

The photo exhibition will be open from March until the end of May. Interested schools can arrange to either:
  1. come and see the exhibition at the University of Edinburgh and meet some of the students involved
  2. see the exhibition and have some workshops about the refugee crisis
  3. request photos of the exhibition, the power point presentation and the film clip for those who are too remote to come to Edinburgh

Please email Annette Gotzkes in the first instance to discuss your preferred option.

Further information about the project can also be found on the University of Edinburgh website.

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How to…support new EAL learners

17 June 2016 (TESS)

Teachers are dealing with increasing numbers of new arrivals to the UK, so here's a guide to ensure every learner with English as an additional language can succeed.

Read the full article in TESS online, 17 June 2016, page 32-33 (subscription required).

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Police Scotland mobilises first Polish officers

24 May 2016 (The Herald)

Two Polish police officers have joined Scotland's national force in a pioneering move to tackle criminality in the country's biggest migrant community.

The men have been seconded for six months as a pilot scheme that may be expanded in the future as EU law enforcement agencies tighten co-operation.

Senior officers at Police Scotland say the two officers have already helped on crucial inquiries involving Poles as perpetrators, victims or witnesses of crimes.

Chief Superintendent Paul Main said: "They are here to advise us and to help us on criminal and other inquiries. "They don't have the power to arrest anybody or question anybody so they are always with Scottish officers.

"But they can assist us with understanding cultural and linguistic issues and connecting with law enforcement in Poland to deal with everything from organised crime to domestic abuse."

[..] However, Poles would also like to see Scottish police raise their knowledge of migrant communities, including learning the language.

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Language issues in migration and integration: perspectives from teachers and learners

22 July 2014 (British Council)

This new book from ESOL Nexus is about the role of language in the integration of migrants. The writers of the chapters are all engaged in the education of migrants as teachers, researchers or policymakers in a wide variety of contexts and they provide us with a rich and thought-provoking array of perspectives from teachers and learners on language issues in migration and integration. Through them we hear directly from learners, migrants who have arrived in a new country and are now striving to master the host language. We learn much from them about the place of language and language learning in their new lives.

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Case Study: ‘Take Care’ – A Health Care Language Guide for Migrants in 17 Languages

6 August 2013 (Language Rich Europe)

According to the Language Rich Europe research, the top provision of multilingual services is, perhaps unsurprisingly, in the tourist sector, with the most widely offered language being English. However, to what extent do cities look at the needs of their inhabitants before deciding which languages to offer and in which services? One of these needs is highlighted by the Language Rich Europe case study on the European Commission-funded project ‘Take Care,’ which seeks to:
[make] health care more accessible and effective for migrants who do not speak the language and are not familiar with the culture nor with the health care system in the host country.

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