Hello all

A few weeks ago I went to the LESLLA conference in Newcastle. LESLLA is the rather unfortunate acronym for 'Low-educated second language literacy acquisition'. It was founded by a group of SLA researchers interested in cognitive and psycholinguistic processes of beginner L2 literacy acquisition. LESLLA has since attracted interest from ESOL (and equivalent) researchers more broadly, including people like me, with an interest in the social and political contexts of teaching and learning ESOL. The Newcastle conference was the third annual meeting of the group.   

There were panel discussions on the last day from the UK, the US, Australia, and the Low Countries. I convened the UK panel and there were presentations from Helen Sunderland, Melanie Cooke and Cathie Wallace (Cathie couldn't make it but circulated her presentation anyway). I've posted the three presentations, in various formats, onto the files pages of the ESOL-Research homepage, together with my introduction to the session. The conference also saw the launch of the proceedings for the previous LESLLA conference in Virginia last year. One of the papers is by yours truly, (on the current state of play in ESOL policy, practice and research in England and Wales) and I've put that on the ESOL-Research site as well. Link to ESOL-Research files area: Go to the ESOL-Research homepage ( www.jiscmail.ac.uk/ESOL-Research ) , click on 'files area' and you'll find all these papers under the directory 'LESLLA 2007'. 

Most of the panel presentations focused on policy and how policy changes and initiatives impinge on the learning lives of beginner ESOL (or DSOL, or whatever) students. It became clear as the conference went on that government policies explicitly or implicitly discriminate hugely against adult beginner L2 literacy students by excluding them in various ways from appropriate provision. In some places (e.g. Australia, Germany) there is a restriction on the number of hours' tuition which new arrivals are entitled to. In Australia, this adds up to about 900 hours for beginner literacy students, which works out to about 2 years full time. After this, students in Australia go to LLNP classes, which have a native-speaker focus. This reminds me of the many ex-ESOL students who populate literacy classes in the UK. In other countries funding restrictions prevent beginner literacy students from gaining access to classes. In England and Wales, for instance, funding is targeted at ESOL for Work courses, and courses above Entry Level 2. It is increasingly difficult for providers to run the types of non-accredited classes which beginner ESOL literacy students so badly need. Regarding migration, entry into some countries for people without a strong literate background can also be very difficult. In Holland, for instance, you have to pass an exam in Dutch (taken on the phone) before you arrive, even if your husband or wife is already living in Holland. 

I made some notes during a discussion of 'What works' for beginner ESOL (etc) literacy students. In sum, these seem to be: 

*	Centre-wide approaches
*	Bicultural as well as bilingual assistants, including volunteers
*	Partnerships of various kinds
*	Collaborative materials development
*	Appropriate learning environments. 

One or two other gems from a very interesting conference: 

Subscribers to ESOL-Research were well-represented. The conference was organised by Martha Young-Scholten, known for her work on adult ESOL literacy from more of a cognitive perspective [http://www.ncl.ac.uk/elll/staff/profile/martha.young-scholten]

Heather Campbell and Michael Hepworth gave a presentation of their work with a beginner ESOL literacy class at Park Lane College, Leeds. email [log in to unmask] for more info. 

Globalisation, urbanisation and migration website (Price and Benton-Short) - well worth exploring if you are interested in the whys and wherefores of global movements of people. http://gstudynet.org/gum/index.php?about <http://gstudynet.org/gum/index.php?about> 

Migration Information.org: A US centre on immigrant integration, includes sharable resources (papers etc) on ESOL and policy in the US - Follow the link to 'Country Resources' for a country-by-country set of resources of all kinds. http://migrationinformation.org/ <http://migrationinformation.org/> 

I've mentioned the CLESE website before - CLESE is the Coalition for the limited English-speaking Elderly, an Illinois-based organisation http://www.clese.org/ <http://www.clese.org/>  - Follow the link to 'videos' for three 'Bright Ideas' videos - two for teaching, one for teacher training.  

Finally the LESLLA website itself contains many links to resources of various kinds, including info about the previous two conferences and their resultant publications. http://www.leslla.org/ <http://www.leslla.org/> 

Cheers!

James


 

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