Reading students' expectations: a talking point

Paper delivered at 'Academic Literacies: Reading in the Academy', Institute of Education, Friday 17 June 2011. This brief paper addresses the issue of graduate and postgraduate learners who have been educated in a language other than English, who subsequently relocate to England to study English. Whether this relocation is for work reasons or for leisure, the challenge of English language acquisition can lead to learner anxiety and a range of issues, including inadvertent peer racism. Using a reflective method and drawing on my own experience of working in FE colleges, HE institutions, privately-owned language schools, and a maximum security prison, I will argue that it is frequently an institution's practice to build a class solely by the existing language attainment of each individual learner (to make a class up of students of approximately the same level of English); and that while this may work well in many cases, the fact that no notice is taken of the individual student's prior attainment in his/her original language can lead to tension if the class is not managed by the tutor. For example, there is often a challenge presented to the tutor of a class comprised of graduates from elsewhere in the world and students of the same level of English who have had no formal education and are in the UK (perhaps) seeking asylum.