Return-Path: <nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id h83NIO707372; Wed, 3 Sep 2003 19:18:24 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 19:18:24 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <001001c37271$66174da0$cdccae51@mycomputer> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: "Fiona Frank" <fionafrank@soundboard.f9.co.uk> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-ESL:9389] Message from the UK X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.2616 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; Status: O Content-Length: 2877 Lines: 53 Dear NIFL ESOL listmembers (copy to Mary Hamilton and Karin Tusting at Lancaster University Literacy Research Centre, Ursula Howard at the National Research and Development Centre, Jane Mace of RaPAL - Research and Practice in Adult Literacy) It has been very interesting to read your latest very heated correspondence about immigrants and English language teaching being 'imposed' on them, on this NIFL ESOL listserve. I've been lurking on this list for a while but I want to hear from you about your opinions on a new issue in the UK so I'm putting pen to paper (as it were) finally. I worked for several years in UK workplace literacy development (and was an active member of the NIFL Workplace list). I have recently left the adult literacy field to start a PhD in a different field - I will be looking at the transmission of Jewish culture through the generations over the last 100 years since the big wave of Jewish immigrants arrived from Eastern Europe at the turn of the last century. I'll be mainly concentrating on those immigrants who went to Scotland, because that's where my grandfather arrived, from Lithuania via Frankfurt. In England we have just been informed by our esteemed government that a commission which has been meeting for a year has recommended that applicants for British Nationality will have to pass a test based on their knowledge of British institutions, English language and British culture. Read more in http://www.guardian.co.uk/britain/article/0,2763,1034966,00.html. And if they don't pass the test they won't get their passport... Well, I know that my grandfather, who was in his 40s when he came here, would never have passed a written test in English - but that he worked all the hours there were making money to send my father and my aunt to university.... My father became a doctor, and my aunt, who's 95 now, was a pretty well known artist in Glasgow (see http://www.hannahfrank.org.uk for examples of her drawings and sculpture which has been exhibited in the Royal Academy....) Isn't that what immigration, especially in these troubled times, is about - to get away from persecution or poor opportunities and hopefully, to make a better life for your children? We have recently had a literacy test enforced by the UK government for all literacy learners. This was opposed by most literacy teachers though we were told by the government that 'the learners liked it'. What is your experience of citizenship tests? Is my kneejerk opinion, that it's an erosion of human rights to withhold a passport from someone if they fail to pass an English test, misinformed? Please let me (and the other people I've circulated this to) hear your opinions, so we can feed them back to the UK literacy and esol community and help to inform our own debate. Thanks and best wishes Fiona Frank (fionafrank@soundboard.f9.co.uk)
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