Skills for Life (ESOL)

This paper introduces the policies and programmes implemented in the UK between 2001 and 2017 to support the integration of migrants. It considers in particular three key reports, 'What works in community cohesion', 'Integration and Opportunity' and 'Integration Not Demonisation' and the ways these have influenced government policy and public perceptions of integration, including government support for ESOL provision for migrants. There is particular reference to the situation relating to migrant women, as this overview of policy and programme will provide the background for Nafisah Graham-Brown's research study on newly arrived migrant women and the development of their social relationships. (Graham-Brown, forthcoming).

Understanding what motivates adults to learn a foreign language and the effects that summative exams have on their motivation is of interest and importance to teachers around the world. However, research on the motivation of students learning English in the United Kingdom is sparse and the impact of low-stakes exams in this context is unclear from present research. This article aims to investigate what motivates intermediate level (B1/B1+), adult students to join an ESOL course and whether the compulsory summative exam at the end of the course has any effect, positive or negative, on their decision to continue learning. Quantitative data was collected through student questionnaires and exam results, which was combined with qualitative data obtained through semi-structured student and teacher interviews. The results seem to show that the students' initial motivation at this level is mainly extrinsic, with the desire to integrate into British society taking priority over the need to pass an exam. These motivational factors appear to have an effect on how high stakes the students view the summative exam along with the consequences they experience in the classroom. Moreover, this research suggests that the role of the teacher throughout this process is pivotal in maintaining the students' motivation and controlling their perception of the exams. The research closes with an evaluation of the findings and recommendations for expanding on this study within similar contexts.

Que sont ces life skills apparues en 2000 dans le Cadre d’action de Dakar ? C’est pour tenter de répondre à cette question, laissée en suspend après quelques tentatives de conceptualisation, que cette étude passe en revue différents cadres théoriques tel celui du DeSeCo de l’OCDE puis revient à la définition même de la compétence. Elle arrive à la conclusion qu’il n’existe pas de compétences transversales, que la notion de compétence seule ne peut suffire à expliquer une action efficace et qu’il est par ailleurs difficile de définir des compétences vraiment universelles. Exemplifiés par la compétence « savoir se prémunir du VIH/SIDA », ces résultats expliquent pourquoi aucun travail conceptuel des « compétences de la vie » n’a été mené à bien, remettant au passage en question d’autres modèles de compétences plus élaborés. Quand bien même une telle modélisation serait possible, son utilité resterait à démontrer.

Mots-clés : life skills, compétences transversales/clés/génériques, VIH/SIDA.

RaPAL Journal Autumn 2007
In this study I investigate a new problem associated with the presence of speakers of English as a second language in ESOL classes in Ireland.  ESOL tutors, coordinators, and learners from countries where English is not used as a lingua franca, are specifically opposed to the attendance of students from Nigeria at ESOL classes, basing this perspective on the alleged disruption of classrooms due to alleged increased noise level, different turn-taking strategies and lexicogrammatical deviations.  The specific question I will address here is whether the impact of Nigerian speakers of English is as problematical and negative as tutors and non-Nigerian learners suggest.

El presente estudio tuvo como objetivo el diseño, construcción y evaluación de una prueba de Habilidades para la vida, instrumento psicométrico creado para la medición del nivel de desarrollo de las 10 habilidades propuestas por la Organización Mundial de la Salud (1993), en población de 15 a 25 años. En términos de validez, se llevó a cabo una revisión de contenido para crear indicadores conductuales en 10 dimensiones, validación por parte de 4 jueces expertos y una aplicación a 100 participantes (50 hombres, 50 mujeres). Posteriormente y, a partir de dichos resultados, se realizó un análisis de unidimensionalidad. En cuanto a la con habilidad, se utilizó el estadístico Alfa de Cronbach y se halló el índice de homogeneidad para la revisión de los ítems. Por último, se transformaron las puntuaciones obtenidas en puntuaciones z, T y percentiles. Como resultado, se observan evidencias de validez y confiabilidad pues la prueba respondió a lo esperado, evidencián...

Belonging: A study of the relationship between migrant women’s social interactions and their perception of their own integration.
Migrant women settling in the UK face multiple barriers to integration. This qualitative study explored the experiences of six newly arrived migrant women who attended community ESOL classes (English for Speakers of Other Languages), focusing on the women’s social interactions in English, the places in which social interactions took place and their sense of belonging. Belonging is defined as feeling at ease with oneself and one’s surroundings (Miller, 2003). Data was gathered over one and a half years, using narrative interviews and oral diaries, and analysed using thematic and classic content analysis methods. The study concluded that women’s social interactions took place in four main spheres: local community, public services, work and home. Data demonstrated that social interactions in English affected women’s feelings of belonging from four aspects: material, relational, cultural and temporal. Findings indicated that social interactions supported women to build trust in people who were different to them and to learn cultural knowledge, practices and acceptable behaviours not formally taught in their ESOL sessions, which supported participants to gain access and to feel at ease in unfamiliar spheres.
This study will help teachers to recognise the contribution of social interactions to their students’ language development and integration; policy-makers to plan for future ESOL and integration programme development and funding; and assist organisations in designing more effective community ESOL programmes. Recommendations include for practitioners to plan for activities to support social interactions outside the classroom, to consider the importance of digital skills in enabling ESOL learners to participate in online social interactions, and a more joined-up approach with public service organisations to support staff in those roles to understand how to best support migrant clients who are learning English.

El presente estudio tuvo como objetivo el diseño, construcción y evaluación de una prueba de Habilidades para la vida, instrumento psicométrico creado para la medición del nivel de desarrollo de las 10 habilidades propuestas por la Organización Mundial de la Salud (1993), en población de 15 a 25 años. En términos de validez, se llevó a cabo una revisión de contenido para crear indicadores conductuales en 10 dimensiones, validación por parte de 4 jueces expertos y una aplicación a 100 participantes (50 hombres, 50 mujeres). Posteriormente y, a partir de dichos resultados, se realizó un análisis de unidimensionalidad. En cuanto a la confiabilidad, se utilizó el estadístico Alfa de Cronbach y se halló el índice de homogeneidad para la revisión de los ítems. Por último, se transformaron las puntuaciones obtenidas en puntaciones
z, T y percentiles. Como resultado, se observan evidencias de validez y confiabilidad pues la prueba respondió a lo esperado, evidenciándose que puede llegarse a la confiabilidad deseada fácilmente al realizarse los ajustes respectivos. En conclusión, con base en los referentes teóricos y empíricos hallados, se evidencia la calidad, pertinencia y utilidad de esta innovadora prueba que, además, no cuenta con precedentes e involucra un tema de alta trascendencia en las Ciencias Sociales y Humanas.
Abstract
The present study aimed at the design, construction and evaluation of evidence of life skills through a psychometric instrument
designed to measure the level of development of the 10 skills proposed by the World Health Organization (1993)
for the population 15 to 25 years. In terms of validity, a review of content was conducted to create behavioral indicators
in 10 dimensions, validation by 4 expert judges and an application to 100 participants (50 men, 50 women). Then, a unidimensional
analysis was performed based on the results obtained. As for reliability, the Cronbach Alpha statistic was used
and with this the homogeneity index was set up for the review of the items found. Finally, the scores obtained were transformed
into Z, T and percentiles. As a result, evidences of validity and reliability are seen as proof that the test resulted
with the expected outcome, showing that the desired reliability can be reached easily by making the respective adjustments.
In conclusion, based on the referent theories and empirical results, the quality became evident, as well as the usefulness of
this innovative test, and its, which is an essential and transcendental subject in Social and Human Sciences.

Migrant women settling in the UK have to prove English-language proficiency and citizenship knowledge in their first two years. Both of these are seen as indicators of integration for migrant women. What are migrant women’s own perceptions of integration and how do their daily interactions play a role in their language development and integration? This Doctor in Education (EdD) Institution Focussed Study explores the role of out-of-class interactions in migrant women’s perceptions of their language development and their integration process through a case study with participatory methods of data collection. Using Bosswick & Heckmann's (2006a) interactive aspect of integration together with sociocultural theories of language development as theoretical perspectives, a case study of this phenomena was carried out. Findings indicate that the out-of-classroom interactions in English are important to enable wider community engagement and integration for migrant women. Formal settings such as work and children’s schools provide opportunities for interactions in informal settings and ESOL classes are perceived to play an important role in developing interactions in informal settings.

This paper derives from a comprehensive study of the communication of a community of speakers of other languages living in an asylum seeker centre in Ireland. The specific focus is on the corpus-based investigation of 48,000 words of lingua franca English extracted from a larger corpus of 98,000 words which were transcribed from recordings of interaction between residents of the centre and native-English-speaking staff and amongst residents themselves over a three year period.

Other corpus-based studies have investigated the use of English as a lingua franca in communities of speakers of other languages, but this study is unique in that the speakers are not EFL students, English is not the lingua franca of choice, and the speakers are ‘inmates’ in a ‘total institution’.

Following McCarthy (1999), the basic core spoken vocabulary of the community was gauged by identifying the point in a computer-based frequency count at which frequency dropped off sharply. The presence in the corpus of McCarthy’s ‘nine broad categories of a basic spoken vocabulary’ was also calibrated, as were expressions of past time, the use of third person morphemes and multiword clusters.

The results, which bear evidence of a vastly limited language system, especially as far as lexis is concerned, raise questions with regard to the notion of vocabulary thresholds in the context of communicative habituation and communicative strategy in atypical speech communities. These results will be presented and the questions will be discussed.