Teaching language to ESOL learners in a numeracy context

1. Teaching language to ESOL learners in a numeracy context Report from Birmingham MET Research Project

2. Reasons behind the Project • LSIS offering small grants • The ESOL curriculum manager identified ESOL learners (Entry 2 to Level 1) who could not help children with their numeracy homework. • The learners thought they were unable to support their children because they did not know the language used in maths. • The ESOL curriculum manager is keen to engage team teaching and tutor collaboration across subject specialist areas and wanted to use this opportunity for numeracy and language teachers to work together.

3. Research Objectives • To teach language to ESOL learners in a numeracy context and for those learners to apply that language when supporting their children with numeracy homework • To develop relevant teaching strategies and resources for teaching of the course • To assess effectiveness of project against measurable outcomes and to make recommendations

4. Process • The college has four campuses across the north of the region. The ESOL Curriculum Manager encouraged the ESOL team to market the course to existing ESOL students across all four campuses. • The numeracy course was set up at a campus that was geographically suitable for the students. • A Skills for Life Numeracy Tutor was appointed who also had expertise in teaching Family Learning. • The course was led by a Numeracy Tutor with an ESOL Tutor providing support with the language.

5. To save time, existing ESOL paperwork was adapted to capture data from the commencement of the course to the end. • Time was set aside for regular collaboration between ESOL and Numeracy Tutors.

6. Are we succeeding? • During the February half-term break the learners brought in their children to college for an extra-curricular session. The session objective was to cook pizza and cakes and to share this using ‘fractions’.

7. Findings • Issues for ESOL learners on benefits, e.g. Jobseeker’s Allowance. They were not allowed to study for more than 15 hours per week and joining this course meant they went over the permitted hours. • Some ESOL tutors were reluctant to allow their learners to attend the course. • Some learners were reluctant to travel to another campus for the Numeracy course as they felt they were taken out of their comfort zone. • Building a teaching relationship with the Numeracy Tutor: do the learners need to know the language before they can learn the maths or look at the maths before they can learn the language (e.g. fractions) ?

8. It was difficult to set individual language targets because the learners did not know what they needed to know. • In a group of 12 learners, the five Polish and two Chinese learners were more advanced in their maths compared with the Congolese, Iraqi and Iranian learners. The latter cohort of students had led more oppressed lives in their own countries with some of the students not having had access to education. • Once the course had commenced it became rather popular by word of mouth from the ESOL students, with requests being made for a similar course to be set up at two of the other campuses, • It proved difficult to find a convenient meeting time for both the Numeracy Tutor and ESOL Tutor to discuss issues.

9. Findings similar to other projects • We encountered the same issues as Leicestershire Adult Learning Service (LALS) in that our learners engaged in a good deal more processing than a first-language speaker. Typically, they were hearing English, decoding what they heard, translating into their first language, processing the message and the maths, translating it into English and then making a response.

10. Findings Cultural issues • The course was only taken up by female learners. There were two main reasons for this. For those who have partners it is an expectation that whilst in the UK, the mothers in the group will help children with homework. They said their partners were ‘too tired to help because they have job’. The second reason was that some of the mothers had no choice but to help their children because they were single. • Some activities are forbidden in some cultures, eg when looking at probability, the learners from Iraq and Iran said gambling was prohibited in their country.

11. Findings Teaching/Learning issues • Learners needed time for processing questions and formulating responses. Hence, the session should have been at least a 2 hour session and not 1.5 hours. • The session should be booked into a classroom where every student has access to a computer. This will enable them to work with online resources, eg maths4life.

12. Recommendations • Team teaching in specialist areas should be for a minimum duration of 2 hours. • Sessions should be booked into a room that has IT facilities/ resources. • The specialist tutor working with the ESOL area should be made aware that ESOL learners will take more time in digesting and processing information. This is not implying that a further/different explanation is required.

13. Recommendations • When team teaching with another subject specialist time must be set aside to share each other’s expertise from the outset. • During the ESOL/tutorial session ESOL tutors should make all learners (male and female) aware of the role of both parents in helping their children with their education. • Staff should keep in the forefront of their minds the cultural issues that may arise, when producing resources for sessions.

14. For ESOL learners to gain maximum benefit in attending sessions of a vocational nature it is imperative that their personal ESOL tutor also supports their vocational learning in their ESOL class. This resource has been produced as a result of a grant awarded by LSIS. The grant was made available through the Skills for Life Support Programme in 2010. The resource has been developed by managers and practitioners. The content should not be compared with commercially produced resources, although in many cases it may have comparable or better learning outcomes.