Linguistics and Education 17 (2006) 56–73

“When I wake up I dream of electricity”: The lives,

aspirations and ‘needs’ of Adult ESOL learners
Melanie Cooke ∗
King’s College London, United Kingdom

Abstract
What are the aspirations of Adult ESOL learners and what social and institutional factors constrain them?
What are the consequent implications for Adult ESOL practitioners? This paper draws on a corpus of 76
interviews with adult migrants learning English in the UK, analyzing four of them in detail using a case
study methodology. Despite the high levels of motivation, investment and individual ‘agency’ of all four, the
case studies show that the constraining effects of structural and institutional factors must also be taken into
account when planning for the educational needs of migrants. The paper goes on to examine the classrooms
in which these learners were studying and suggests that the methods employed for attempting to meet their
needs, such as individualised learning plans, are inadequate because they ignore the real life experiences of
ESOL learners. It also suggests that the activities and practices of ESOL classrooms, while fulfilling some
needs such as the affective and social, often fail to equip migrants to realise their full potential as users of
English, members of the work force and future citizens.
© 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Adult ESOL learners; Aspirations; Motivations; Investment; Agency; Structural and institutional constraints

1. Introduction

In this paper, I focus on the lives of some of the learners of English for Speakers of Other
Languages (ESOL) who were students in the classrooms researched for the ESOL Effective
Practice Project (EEPP) (see the introduction to this special issue). Adult ESOL learners bring
to their classrooms diverse experiences and dynamic multiple identities—not ‘identities’ in the
sense of fixed unchanging attributes, but, following a post-structuralist approach (cf. Pavlenko &
Blackledge, 2004; Block, 2006) as contingent processes involving “dialectic relations between

∗ Tel.: +44 20 7848 3122.

E-mail address: melanie.2.cooke@kcl.ac.uk.

0898-5898/$ – see front matter © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.linged.2006.08.010
 M. Cooke / Linguistics and Education 17 (2006) 56–73 57

learners and the various worlds and experiences they inhabit and which act on them” (Ricento,
2004). Knowing more about learners and their “various worlds and experiences” enhances our
understanding of which factors influence their English language learning and what kinds of
syllabus and pedagogical approach might be most apt for them. I examine a series of interviews
carried out with learners in their dominant language and discuss how their experiences outside
the classroom and their positioning as migrants and members of linguistic and ethnic minorities
structure their access to education, work and the target language and condition their aspirations for
the future. I look briefly at the data set as a whole, and then focus on four interviews in particular
to look more closely at some of the issues arising from the larger set, particularly those relating
to employment. In order to make sense of the stories these learners tell I draw particularly on
Norton’s work on ‘investment’ (1995, 2000) and her reworking of Bourdieu’s notions of legitimate
speakers and the ‘right to impose reception’, as well as work by Kanno and Norton (2003) and
Norton (2001) on ‘imaginary future communities’. I discuss how far this work might illuminate
the issues affecting ESOL learners in England at this particular time. I also critically examine the
classrooms in which some of the learners were studying and ask the following questions:

• given the strong focus in current adult education on learner ‘needs’ and ‘student centred cur-
ricula’, to what extent are the systems in place in colleges and other learning environments –
most notably the Individual Learning Plan (ILP) – effective in working out what those ‘needs’
might actually be?And, related to this:
• to what extent are the activities and content of ESOL classrooms best serving these people in
terms of encouraging their full potential as learners and users of English?

2. The contexts of ESOL learners’ lives in England

2.1. Socio-political context

The socio-economic, political and educational contexts which provide the background to the
learners I discuss in this paper are large and complex. Our survey of classes in London and
the north of England consisted of refugees, asylum seekers1 still awaiting a decision on their
applications, EU nationals (especially from the new accession countries), people from so-called
‘settled’ communities who may have been in the country for many years, newly-arrived ‘spouses’,
so-called ‘economic migrants’, people who are joining family members, people with work permits
and even some people who were born in the UK who had spent their childhoods abroad. In
other words, they represent a spectrum of people living, often side by side, in a post-colonial
society in a time of globalisation (Block & Cameron, 2002; Gow, 2005; Blommaert, Collins, &
Slembrouck, 2005), characterised by “flows of people, finance, technologies and communications
media [which] criss-cross national borders” (Rampton, Harris, & Leung, 2001). Contemporary
London is among a growing group of ‘cosmopolitan’ or ‘global’ cities (Block, 2006; Gow, 2005).
Global cities are likely to contain communities of cosmopolitan elites such as professionals and
business people and large relatively stable working class ethnic minorities living alongside people
seeking asylum as a result of political upheavals. As well as the official economy, there are thriving

1 For the purposes of this paper, a refugee is considered to be someone who has been successful in his/her application

for asylum and who has either leave to remain in the UK or full refugee status. An asylum seeker is someone who is still
waiting for a decision on their application. During this time, they are subject to various legal constraints, e.g. prohibition
from employment.
58 M. Cooke / Linguistics and Education 17 (2006) 56–73

alternative economies populated by workers without permits or legal status. Earlier definitions of
immigrant ‘groups’ and ethnic minority ‘communities’ fall short of describing the global flows in
‘hyperdiverse’ cities (Kyambi, 2005) such as London in which the social identities of more people
are becoming less closely tied with their countries of birth or nationality or ‘deterritorialised’
(Cohen, 1997; Johnston, Forrest, & Poulson, 2002). Some people move with ease from one place
to another, others remain linked to their countries of origin through technology and cheap air
travel, while others fall foul of increasingly stringent immigration controls.
The government response to globalisation has been contradictory: at the same time as acting
as “the hopeful host to transnational business, seeking to attract inward investment by offering
a secure and stable environment, an abundance of skilled low-wage labour and limited state
regulation” (Rampton et al., 2001) it must also appeal to certain sections of the electorate by
being seen to be ‘tough’ on asylum and immigration (Blunkett, 2002). This tension has resulted
in a series of contradictory and draconian (especially to those seeking asylum) attempts to control
immigration through legislation (Sales, 2005; Flynn, 2005), which impact directly on many of the
ESOL learners in our study. Many ESOL learners are also members of the communities currently
in the frontline of the UK debates on national security in the wake of terrorist attacks in New York,
Madrid and London, as well as the debate on English/British ‘national identity’ (Freedland, 2005;
Monbiot, 2005; Daily Telegraph, 2005). In the most recent of a long line of ‘moral panics’ equating
language issues such as ‘bad grammar’ with public disorder (Cameron, 1995) a perceived lack of
English language competence in some minority communities in England has been discursively
linked with a break down of social cohesion (e.g. see Blackledge, 2005, for a full discussion of
discourses of this type); in a seeming contradiction with the waiting lists for ESOL classes and
in the absence of any empirical evidence, immigrants from non English-speaking countries are
accused of being reluctant to learn English at all, and of therefore being in breach of “the contract
they enter into when they settle in Britain” (speech by Margaret Hodge, Minister for Work and
Pensions, in Wintour, 2005).

2.2. Educational context

In addition to the current socio-political context, ESOL learners must also be considered in
their educational context, which, like immigration, is conditioned by the larger processes of
globalisation and marketisation (Fairclough, 1992). Rampton et al. (2001) summarise education
policy in England since the 1980s as “neo-liberal market economies combined with cultural
authoritarianism”. There is a tension between consumer ‘choice’ (e.g. the distortion of the principle
of ‘student-led’ education to market principles), and a strong centralising tendency in terms of
curricula. One example of this is the introduction of the National Literacy Strategy (NLS) in
schools and the corresponding ‘strategy’ for adult basic skills, known as Skills for Life.
Skills for Life was implemented to address the problem of low adult basic skills in the UK
(Moser, 1999), regarded by government as an obstacle to the country’s potential for growth and
competition in the global economy (see Luke, 1996 and Wolf, 2002 for a discussion on this). This
led in turn to a statutory national curriculum for ESOL, the Adult ESOL Core Curriculum (DfES,
2001) (AECC), which effectively harnessed ESOL to the adult basic skills agenda for the first time
(see Murray, 2004 for examples of this in other settings, e.g. the USA). The declared intention
of this curriculum is to ensure that speakers of languages other than English acquire the English
oracy and literacy skills necessary to function as independent citizens and potential members of
the workplace. The AECC document details all that an adult should be taught to do in reading,
writing, speaking and listening at six levels of English proficiency, and is accompanied by specially
 M. Cooke / Linguistics and Education 17 (2006) 56–73 59

produced materials, teachers’ notes, assessment tools and an array of commercially designed tests
for each level of attainment. While it has been welcomed by some as a long overdue validation of
TESOL professionals, the AECC has also been criticised, like others of its type (Murray, 2004;
Auerbach, 1986), as overly prescriptive, overly general, too outcomes-based and too mired in the
“vocabulary of skills” (Fairclough, 1992). The AECC syllabus is a mixture of functions, grammar
and literacy ‘skills’ presented in supposed realistic urban English settings. The pedagogic and
linguistic models underlying the AECC are not made explicit, however, leading Murray to state
that it “seems to be recommending a mixed syllabus”. This is probably a result of its need to be
‘all things to all people’, people in this case being the hugely diverse and sometimes disparate
population of ESOL learners described in this paper, as well as employers, funding bodies and
government departments with targets to meet.

2.3. Individual learners, learning plans and learner “needs”

Second language acquisition has been criticised by theorists working from a sociocultural
perspective for conceptualising learning as primarily psycholinguistic and for sidelining the
social aspects of language (Firth & Wagner, 1997; Rampton, 1997; Block, 2003; Norton, 2000;
Blommaert, Collins, & Slembrouck, 2005). Similarly, the actual life experiences of learners them-
selves in different SLA contexts have often been “eclipsed” from the picture altogether (Candlin,
2001) at the level of planning, policy and pedagogy. Skills for Life and its attendant curricula,
however, do place a strong emphasis on ‘learner centred’ instruction, led by an insistence on
meeting learners’ ‘needs’ and making lessons ‘relevant’ to their daily lives. Although all learners
follow the same general curriculum there is at the same time a strong emphasis on the individual,
which is to be realised by acknowledging that learners have ‘spiky profiles’ (i.e. that they may
be better at speaking English than at writing it for example) and by rigorous ‘diagnosis’ of their
linguistic deficits and what they ‘need’ to learn. This diversity is then to be addressed in the
classroom through such teaching strategies as ‘differentiation’ of learners’ skills and abilities and
Individual Learning Plans which are to be negotiated with each learner. Therefore, the AECC and
current pedagogy is ostensibly very ‘student centred’ indeed, so much so that the ILP has become
a central requisite in the planning of ESOL lessons (and the subject of much controversy amongst
ESOL teachers) and a major tool for mapping and measuring learner achievement.
However, it is debatable whether this ostensible emphasis on individual learners and the systems
in place for finding out about them, such as ILPs, actually do very much to help teachers understand
what it is about the lives and aspirations of their students that might really need to be taken into
account when planning a course or writing a syllabus. Despite suspicions held by teachers that
their learners may have limited opportunities to practise English outside the classroom and that
immigration status, culture, class, gender and ethnicity may play some part in their learners’
access – or lack of access – to education and employment, these notions are sometimes vague
and certainly not made central in any analyses of learner ‘needs’. In fact systems such as ILPs
and an obsessive focus on ‘measurable outcomes’ and the acquisition of skills as commodities
might actually serve the demands of the market somewhat better than the real individual needs
of learners (Fairclough, 1992). Skills for Life and the AECC fit well into what Bernstein (1996)
calls a ‘performance’ model of education (see Rampton et al., 2001 and Leung, 2001 for a further
elaboration of this). Not to be confused with a performance model of language, Bernstein’s model
is an educational one critiqued for its concern with product rather than process. The performance
model specifies the texts and skills the learner is supposed to acquire and judges the learner
on the extent to which s/he matches these. In Bernstein’s performance model of education the
60 M. Cooke / Linguistics and Education 17 (2006) 56–73

emphasis is on how a learner differs from others in the group and what his/her deficits are.
Because this model lends itself to instrumental training and is inclined to see the acquisition of
target knowledge as a matter of individual ability and choice it is regarded by Bernstein as having
a “profound compatibility” with the requirements of a market economy. Indeed it also seems
highly compatible with the current tendency amongst British politicians and some sections of the
media to suggest that learning English is solely a matter of individual choice, and furthermore a
choice which is too often not taken up by immigrants even when the opportunities are there for
them.

2.4. The learners in the EEPP study

I discuss here some broad findings from 76 interviews conducted between March 2004 and
March 2005. I then focus more closely on some of these findings by looking at four interviews in
particular. The languages and nationalities of all the learners we interviewed are shown in Fig. 1.
The 19 languages and 26 nationalities represented by the interviews were selected from the
total data set which consisted of 58 languages and 50 nationalities (see forthcoming EEPP report
and Roberts et al., this volume for further discussion on methodology and issues arising from
this part of the research). Interviewing learners in one of their dominant languages, meant that,
unusually, people with very low levels of English were able to act as informants, giving us insights
into a cross section of their worlds which we would not otherwise have gained with our other
research instruments. Access to the stories and narratives told by our informants means we are

Fig. 1. Languages and countries of origin of EEPP interviewees.

 M. Cooke / Linguistics and Education 17 (2006) 56–73 61

able to gain a view from within – or from “the inside” (Pastor and De Fina, 2005) – on “processes
of language displacement and relocation lived by minority groups” (ibid).

2.5. The interviews

Above all the interviews reveal a striking diversity amongst ESOL learners both between and
within their ethnic and linguistic groups and how their identities change through time and space,
especially as people crossing borders in a literal and figurative sense (Harris, 2003; Pavlenko et
al., 2001; Norton, 2000; Benson & Nunan, 2004). Although there is a tendency amongst teachers
of ESOL to use “shared shorthand” (Spack, 1997:765) to talk about students from a particular
ethnic or linguistic background as essentially the same, this is not unproblematic for learners
themselves who may share their national identity with some of their classmates but differ sharply
in terms of class, previous education, length of residence in the UK, gender, age, sexuality, political
affiliation and intentions for the future. As discussed in the section above on socio-cultural context,
a major difference between the informants is that of immigration status, which directly affects the
choices people are able to make regarding employment and accommodation. Thus, there is a huge
variation amongst the communities, neighbourhoods, family and social networks which people
are part of and which in turn affect their access to English and English speakers, to employment
and ‘communities of practice’ (Wenger, 1998; Lave & Wenger, 1991).
Given their level of diversity, a meaningful discussion about ESOL learners as a whole is, by
definition, difficult. There are themes however which do occur to varying degrees in most of the
interviews. Taken together, they suggest a picture of people who are all, in some way or another
and to a greater or lesser extent, marginalized or, in different ways ‘on the outside looking in’,
either because of their status and experiences as ethnic and linguistic minority people (which is
always conditioned by other factors such as gender, age, class and race) and/or because they are
subject to laws which prohibit them from employment and full citizenship. Related to this is access
– or lack of access – to the target language and opportunities to practise (Bremer, Roberts, Vasseur,
Simonot, & Broeder, 1996; Peirce-Norton, 1995; Norton, 2000; Rockhill, 1987; Kouritzin, 2000;
Cumming & Gill, 1992; Menard-Warwick, 2005), motivation to learn English and how people
visualise their futures. Most people spoke of their very limited opportunity to speak English with
local English speaking communities and many seem to carry out most of their English interactions
in unequal encounters with bureaucrats (see Bremer et al., 1996) or casual encounters in settings
such as shops. Almost without exception, and in contradiction to current accusations in public
discourse, these learners are committed to learning English, believe it is essential for their well-
being and success in England, are keen to meet English speakers and practise English, and are
extremely frustrated at their limited opportunities to do so. In light of this, ESOL lessons have an
important place in the lives of these informants, especially for those for whom it is their sole space
for speaking English. Despite the economic agenda of Skills for Life, like most adult education,
the ESOL classes in this study serve several important functions, not least for some people a place
to meet others and break their isolation (see Barton, Ivanic, Appleby, Hodge, & Tusting, 2004).
Many note their improvement and ability to carry out more of their daily functions independently
since coming to class, and many talk of their increased confidence, the value of the group and
the positive identity they derive from calling themselves ‘students’ rather than ‘asylum seekers’
or ‘housewives’ (see Rockhill, 1987). Few are openly critical of their classes and even fewer of
their teachers (at least in interviews with researchers!) but interestingly they make scarce mention
of two things which are obsessively important in Skills for Life, namely assessments and, most
pertinently to the present discussion, ILPs. Many are attending classes with the instrumental aim
62 M. Cooke / Linguistics and Education 17 (2006) 56–73

of gaining employment or improving their current job prospects, believing that better English (or
in many cases “perfect English”) is the key to this, but few are able to talk more specifically yet
of how their classes might help them achieve it. It is this final issue that I would like to explore in
the rest of the paper.

2.6. Four case studies

I focus now on four particular learners who are not necessarily typical but ‘telling’ cases
(Mitchell, 1984; and see Roberts et al., 2004 for further discussion of case-study methodology).
The four were chosen from a larger sub-set identified as those in which the interviewer had
been able to successfully draw out long narratives and in-depth descriptions from the learners
(see Roberts this volume for a full account of the bilingual interview process). The four under
discussion in this paper were selected finally because they are all very concerned in one way or
another with employment and their future careers, either because they are prohibited from working,
unemployed, or working in low paid unsatisfying jobs. All four (with the possible exception of
Haxhi, case study 4 below) believe that improving their English will help them make changes and
move on to better things, i.e. they are people who need little convincing of the economic promise
of the Skills for Life strategy. With this in mind I look particularly at what their interviews reveal
about their real needs as actual or potential workers in the labour force, about how far their ‘cultural
capital’ (Bourdieu, 1991) is valued by wider society, about their access to the target language,
their uses of English and other languages outside the classroom, their ‘investment’ in the target
language and what they imagine for their futures. I will also examine the linguistic and pedagogic
practices in their current classes and consider how knowledge of the issues revealed by in-depth
interviews with learners might enhance, improve or change those practices.

2.6.1. Case study 12 : Dasha “I am an ordinary woman forced to try to survive”

Dasha3 is a Russian asylum seeker in her early forties studying at a large London college.
She was born in Siberia, trained as a nurse and spent 15 years working in military hospitals
in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Her life changed dramatically in 1999 when she went through a
traumatic divorce: “we were left on the street with two bags. In other words, I lost everything.”
Fearing that she would once again be sent to Chechnya, and fearing also that her son would be
sent there as a conscript in the Russian army, Dasha decided to come to England to find a way of
making money and to build a new life. She and her son are both now claiming asylum.
Dasha brings with her high levels of cultural capital, both educationally and professionally.
She demonstrates an extremely high level of ‘investment’ in the target language, driven by her
need to consider the well-being of her children, “stand on her own feet”, her sense of obligation
as an immigrant (she is scathing of people who migrate to England and refuse to work) and above
all her desire to become a member of her ‘imagined future community’. Her main aim is to get a
job as a nurse with the National Health Service (NHS) as she knows there is a skills shortage and
she has many years of specialist experience. However, her Russian qualifications are not accepted
by the NHS so she must either pay a large fee for a ‘Highly Skilled Migrant Visa’ or take a skills

2 Dasha’s case study was written partly by Patrick Bushell, her teacher during the EEPP study. He used Dasha’s EEPP

interview, carried out in Russian by a Lithuanian teacher and academic, as well as his one of his own carried out in English.
These became part of his MA thesis in 2005.
3 The names of learners have all been changed.
 M. Cooke / Linguistics and Education 17 (2006) 56–73 63

transfer course at a London teaching hospital. She has already had an interview for this course
and has been told that she has to improve her English before she can enrol.
Meanwhile, in order to save up the fee or learn English well enough for her skills transfer
course – whichever comes first – Dasha is working illegally in an amusement arcade in east
London which gives her lots of opportunities to practise English with customers. She has a wide
network of friends from many countries, particularly ex-Soviet states and eastern Europe with
whom she speaks either English, Russian or Polish as lingua francas. She has adopted an informal
role as an adviser to many people in her community, especially on matters of health. She also
seems to be a kind of ‘agony aunt’ to young Russian women who have married unsuitable men
as a way of securing financial security. She comments that in the evening her phone “never stops
ringing”. Dasha says life in London is easy compared with the tribulations of her former life in
Russia and believes that London offers people chances as long as they are prepared to work: “If
you are simply sitting here, naturally you are losing everything, but if you want to do something
then you are moving ahead”.
Dasha is enrolled on a general ESOL course which covers low intermediate grammar and
vocabulary, speaking and listening practice and some reading and writing. The learners are given
challenging tasks and plenty of time and support to complete them in a serious but supportive
environment. A lot of the work in the class is designed to develop learners’ oral skills, and the
teacher is unusual in his attempts to encourage oral work of a more formal and academic nature.
This, coupled with the practice she gets in her job and with her wide social network means that
Dasha is probably well placed to develop her oral English skills. She would not seem to need this
class for confidence building or for her social life, which is not the case for some of her more
isolated less educated classmates, but she is a valuable and popular member of the group as a whole.
What she is not getting in this class is the kind of work necessary to begin to develop the academic
and technical literacy she will need on her skills transfer course and the specific institutional
discourses and genres she will need to learn as a nurse in a UK hospital (Shrubshall, Chopra,
& Roberts, 2004; Baynham, this volume; Roberts, 2004). Before the teacher’s involvement with
EEPP for which he analysed her Russian interview and interviewed her again in English, Patrick
had been aware that Dasha wished to work as a nurse and for that she would have to “improve
her writing”. To this end her ILP for the term reveals targets to do with spelling common words
and basic grammar. However, after the two interviews Patrick learned from Dasha herself what
she aspires to do, and furthermore what she needs to do it. Unless Dasha can find a course more
geared to her needs as a future nurse, Patrick now has the task of trying to help her develop her
academic literacy as far as possible within the constraints of the AECC and the general English
course, and the possibly conflicting needs of the other learners in the class.
Dasha’s story shows that even a learner such as her who has a very strong investment in
learning the target language, who brings along with her valuable cultural and symbolic capital,
who is not a member of a visible minority, who speaks several European languages and who
aligns herself with dominant discourses on immigrants and asylum seekers (some are lazy and
do not want to work, there are opportunities here if you are prepared to work for them) is subject
to powerful institutional gatekeeping processes (Erickson & Schultz, 1982) which almost render
her investment useless, or at least make her ‘return’ on her investment still look a long way
away. Dasha has made a great ‘agentive’ effort to find out what she needs to do in a complicated
bureaucracy and has made several personal sacrifices (she has allowed her son to hide her Russian
books and videos to force her to read and listen to English at home). Despite this, and despite a
nationwide shortage of qualified medical staff, Dasha has been in the UK since 2000 and, at best,
will manage to enter the bottom rung of her profession by early 2007, 7 years after her arrival.
64 M. Cooke / Linguistics and Education 17 (2006) 56–73

2.6.2. Case study 24 : Xun Wang “If they give me the opportunity I won’t do worse than them”
Xun Wang’s first language is Cantonese but he is also an expert speaker of Mandarin, the
language in which his interview took place. His story contrasts with Dasha’s in certain fundamental
ways; Xun Wang has less cultural capital than Dasha in terms of education and skills and he is a
member of a visible ethnic minority but unlike her he belongs to a close knit supportive family
and is legally permitted to work. He has lived in a large northern city for around 15 years, having
come to that part of England when the economy was more buoyant than it is today. He and his wife
Jun Hang are enrolled on a course run by a private sector ‘training provider’ funded by Jobcentre
Plus, a national government programme for the unemployed to improve their language, literacy,
numeracy and IT skills and thereby their chances in the job market. He ran a Chinese take-away
for many years with his wife which they recently had to close because the business was failing.
Xun Wang and Jun Hang are trying hard to find work but have had little luck, having failed to get
an offer for a job at a local supermarket and having worked one day without pay in a local sweat
shop before deciding it was far too physically punishing for them to do full time.
Xun Wang does not speak a lot of English outside the class as his son, a postgraduate from the
University of Leeds, has always provided support for his family in terms of English language and
literacy. Additionally Xun Wang always preferred his wife to work on the counter in their take-
away so he avoided speaking English with the customers. He has a superficial relationship with his
neighbours: “we just greet each other, for example, when I’m weeding in my garden, they see me
and say, “you’re weeding”, and I say, “yes, I’m weeding, you’re weeding too”. Just like that, no
further talk” and spends his leisure time looking at Chinese web-sites and dismantling computers.
Xun Wang talks about being scared of being insulted and the need to have more English to protect
himself from unscrupulous practices. He has made a big investment in his English course which
he firmly believes will help him “get into society”; he spends hours doing homework (usually
texts adapted from EFL textbooks) and he and his wife have changed their habits and curtailed
their social life to incorporate the demands of a course which they must attend for thirty hours a
week. In terms of ‘investment’ Xun Wang and his wife are expecting high returns.
Xun Wang’s ideal job would be to assemble computers, which he does already as a hobby and
which would be similar to a job he did before assembling radios. However, he feels that he will
never be considered for this job because he has no formal experience and he will never be given
the chance to prove his skills in a way which does not involve an interview: “they don’t want me,
surely. Because it’s the same in any countries, relevant experience is required. I don’t have such
experience. . .but what I want to say is the person who has relevant experience might not work
better than me. I have practical knowledge but not theoretical one. For example, if a computer
doesn’t work after being assembled, those workers might use theoretical knowledge (to solve the
problem), while I use my experience. I could judge the line that is incorrectly connected. . .if they
give me the opportunity I won’t do worse than them (refers to the technical workers). But the main
problem is I can’t get the opportunity.” He feels that it would be unacceptable to approach a firm
and ask for an interview with no experience and it is even more unlikely that they would give him
a chance to prove himself as “the fastest and best” worker. It is certainly the case that under current
practices the gate-keeping mechanism of the formal job interview and demands for qualifications
are likely to work against Xun Wang’s chances of proving his abilities (see Campbell and Roberts
(forthcoming) for further discussion).

4 This interview was conducted by a Chinese postgraduate student of translation at the University of Leeds.
 M. Cooke / Linguistics and Education 17 (2006) 56–73 65

Having access through his interview to the world of a low level speaker such as Xun Wang
brings several issues into sharp relief. The first is that the teacher on his English course knows
nothing about Xun Wang’s dream of working with computers and so is unable to suggest that he
do a course such as PC maintenance which might help him actually get into a field for which there
is demand in the labour market. The second is the high level of awareness Xun Wang displays of
his progress in English and his chances of getting any of the jobs he has applied for while on the
Jobcentre Plus course. His teacher believes Xun Wang and Jun Hang have made great progress
on his course but Xun Wang knows that their progress is also due to the fact that they have
been in an English-speaking environment for a long time and therefore have heard many words
a thousand times: “we improved, but the reason might be we knew a little English before since
we’ve lived here for more than ten years, though I didn’t know the meaning of the words I’d heard
of them”. Similarly, the teacher is sure that Xun Wang and his wife will get the jobs they apply for
in a local supermarket because Chinese people are “industrious”, but Xun Wang knows they are
having difficulties getting jobs because of their age, their particular work experience, their level of
English and because they are used to working for themselves. In light of these structural obstacles
to employment there seems little point in spending time practising generic form-filling, interview
techniques and other ‘job-seeking skills’ which are in themselves unlikely to equip people such
as Xun Wang with the tools necessary to resist societal forces such as ageism and linguicism.
Perhaps unsurprisingly in a government funded scheme, in order for a course to be regarded as
successful and thus to secure further funding, as well as general English and job-seeking skills,
attendees also have to carry out a series of ‘competencies’ and find a job within 3 months of
finishing their course. These competencies are sometimes well below their actual level of ability
and often assess things that learners can already do, such as copying out a text word for word. It
seems that in many cases this is done knowingly by training providers, and that fulfilling funding
obligations takes precedence over any reference to learner ‘needs’ even in a very narrow sense.
The vivid contrast of Xun Wang’s knowledge of himself as a worker and a learner with that of
his teacher’s provides a striking example of the inability of institutional procedures to capture in
even a small way the reality of learners’ lives. In the case of courses funded by Jobcentre Plus
learner needs are systematically kept out of the picture altogether because they simply do not fit in
with the pre-determined competency model which has accountability as its main aim (Auerbach,
1986; Fairclough, 1992).
At the end of the course, Xun Wang and his wife opened up another take-away, despite advice
to the contrary from their teacher. In an impressive piece of Jobcentre Plus ‘double thinking’
though, this was turned into a ‘success story’ for the training provider, even though the success
consisted of two people going back to doing exactly what they were doing before they joined
the course: “They’re very positive they’re very happy. Very different people from when they first
came here. . .they decided to start a business again. So it’s a success story. And that’s not, well
they’ll say of course partly due to our teaching. But also because they are very very good learners.
They’re very dedicated. They are really ideal learners excellent learners. They’re motivated.”

2.6.3. Case study 35 : Mariana “I will keep going forward, above all”
Mariana is a Colombian refugee in her 50s studying at a community centre in London run by
a religious charity. The charity was set up after inner-city riots in this part of London in the 1980s

5 This interview was carried out by Melanie Cooke, author of this paper and researcher on the ESOL Effective Practice

Project.
66 M. Cooke / Linguistics and Education 17 (2006) 56–73

with the aim of creating “supportive pathways towards social inclusion for inner-city women and
girls” (from the centre’s mission statement). In Colombia, Mariana’s last job was as a door-to-
door saleswoman of lingerie. She clearly had very serious problems in Colombia which she was
reluctant to talk about in her interview, saying simply that she is a refugee because of “things,
problems, I had to leave”.
Mariana’s story reveals her to have slightly more control over her life than Haxhi in the
following case study, despite having been at the rough end of British justice when she was placed
in a detention centre for several months when she first arrived in the UK. She works as a cleaner for a
low wage, because cleaners come “very very cheap” but she has a strong ethical responsibility to do
her job to the best of her abilities. She has a place to live despite it being a long way from family and
school, and above all she is extremely happy with the teachers at her chosen place of study where,
in line with the declared ethos of the organisation, she feels comfortable and valued as a human
being. Mariana is clearly getting some very important needs met as an isolated older learner with
little experience of formal learning. For many women, English language learning can be associated
with the possibilities of freedom and empowerment they hitherto regarded as impossible (Rockhill,
1987; Foner, 1997; Kibria, 1990; Gordon, 2004). This may or may not have been the case for
Mariana who is here without her family, but it is clear that for her learning English is an important
and enjoyable part of her life which she is not prepared to give up even if she gets a better job.
That said, Mariana’s aspirations for the future are twofold: she desperately wishes to get a
better job which pays her more money (she imagines this better job will be working in a factory
of some kind, perhaps as a packer), and linked to this, wishes to be in a position to bring her
teenage grandson over to England. Her motivation is driven by her responsibility to her children
and grandchildren (as is Dasha above) and her continued hope for a “better life”. These two desires
are strongly linked in Mariana’s mind with learning more English (which she believes she needs
to get a better job and, therefore, more money to support a teenager) and it is this which is driving
her investment in her English classes.
However, despite her strong investment in learning, Mariana’s opportunities to practise English
are very limited. Her use of English outside the class is limited to casual encounters: “in the street
for example when I don’t know where to go when I ask about something yes or sometimes if
someone sits next to me and talks to me and asks where I’m from and with the little I speak I
speak to the person”. She works in a job where she has to speak little if at all, and when she
does have to speak it is with her manager who is also Colombian. This is a typical pattern in low
level jobs which are often performed by people from the same linguistic and minority groups (see
Goldstein, 1996). Mariana has a job – one of the purported goals of the Skills for Life programme
– but this affords her no opportunities at all to practise English. Work as a barrier to English
language acquisition is something the EEPP interviewers heard many times amongst speakers
of different languages, either because they have low paid isolated jobs in, e.g. hotels where they
don’t speak to anyone or because everyone they work with speaks the same language as them.
Mariana’s investment in learning seems inadequate in the face of the strength of the structural
institutional factors which drive people from their countries of origin in the first place and shape
their possibilities in the new country.
In addition to this Mariana is a rather isolated person (‘apartada’) and she has few people
outside the class with whom to speak her own language, never mind English. She chooses not to
take advantage of the large Latin American community in London and spends a lot of time on her
own. This reluctance to seek out people from the same ethno-linguistic group was reported by
other people on the EEPP project and has been commented upon by Block (2006) in his discussion
of the Colombian ‘Javier’. Block comments that the somewhat ‘dog eat dog’ world of migrants
 M. Cooke / Linguistics and Education 17 (2006) 56–73 67

in which they tend to be competing for the same jobs undermines the formation of ‘community’.
Added to this is the caution and lack of trust reported by other Colombians in the EEPP study, as
well as Angolans and Congolese, that may come from recent experience with civil war.
Whatever the reason for her isolation from her own linguistic community, Mariana’s oppor-
tunities for interaction in English are limited to casual encounters in the street or with officials
(Carrier, 1999, and see Bremer et al. (1996) for further discussion) and she has serious problems
understanding English on the few occasions she is addressed. She blames this on her ‘ear’ and
on her age but of course it may also be attributable to her lack of opportunities to practise as a
low status migrant worker rarely given the “right to impose reception” (Norton, 2000, following
Bourdieu). Despite her difficulties Mariana says she has made progress. She says: “because when
people speak when I go in the bus when I read something I know what it means”. However, it
is notable that she does not talk about actual interactions with actual people but talks of herself
almost as an eavesdropper on others’ conversations. Bourdieu’s notion of legitimate speakers and
the unequal rights to “impose reception” do not go quite far enough to describe the experience
of someone like Mariana who scarcely has the right to listen, let alone speak, leaving her to rely
instead on furtive eavesdropping on public transport.
Mariana’s teacher, like Haxhi’s (below), is acutely aware of the problems faced by the women
in her class and believes in the ethos of the centre whose priority is to boost women’s confidence
and raise their self esteem, saying it is “like living in a house”. Her knowledge about her students
does not come from ILPs, which are very unpopular amongst the women in her class who actually
demanded they be abolished because they took too much time away from whole group work,
but rather from what they tell her in class and in extra-curricular conversations. Based on what
she knows of the lives of her learners and firmly in line with the Adult ESOL Core Curriculum,
Mariana’s teacher believes that her learners need above all to be able to function in society on
a basic survival level, such as accessing health care and welfare benefits and filling in forms.
Mariana describes what they do in class as “doing questions about names and addresses, how to
say if you get the wrong change and if the ticket machine is not working, how to ask a favour,
or when you need a direction”. They also do reading and writing of “dialogues, questions and
answers between people in the class”. However, it is unclear whether this diet of basic survival
English and exchanges between strangers that Mariana and her teacher describe (see Auerbach and
Burgess, 1985 for a critique of ‘survival’ English) will in the long run fulfil the needs of someone
like Mariana who must work for a living, wishes to be able to care for her grandchild, has no
partner to support her and wants to stop being regarded by employers as “very very cheap”. As a
study on ESL classes at Levis in the US showed, (Harper, Peirce, & Burnaby, 1996) classes for
women in the workplace were comfortable and unthreatening and led to women improving their
understanding of English but also to reproducing in their classes the personal sphere of women’s
domestic realms. They did not become more involved with the practices of their workplace or
use their new skills to look for better jobs. Perhaps those women, and women like Mariana, need
to acquire the English associated with the public sphere of the world of work, in which people
have to attend interviews and negotiate terms and conditions rather than rehearse over and over
the only interactions they have opportunities to engage in outside the classroom.

2.6.4. Case study 46 : Haxhi “This life is far far away from the normal one”
Haxhi is a 28-year-old asylum seeker from Kosovo who lives in a town in the north of England.
His story is an extreme example (but by no means an uncommon one, see Hodge, 2004; Baynham,

6 This interview was conducted by an Albanian refugee who now works as a health professional.
68 M. Cooke / Linguistics and Education 17 (2006) 56–73

this volume) of someone whose life is almost entirely dictated by the laws governing asylum in the
UK. As asylum seekers Haxhi and his wife have no right to work, cannot choose where they live
and must live on a reduced level of state welfare. Along with other asylum seekers in the town,
they live in temporary accommodation on a housing estate where they have suffered constant
racism and harassment; their door and windows have been broken “many times”. This constraint,
enforced poverty and harassment is causing him to feel bored, frustrated and anxious but worse
is Haxhi’s fear that he may be deported, which is not eased by the fact that two other members
of his class had their asylum applications refused during the course of this study (see Bloch and
Schuster, 2005): “I don’t know what is going to happen. I have a family here and I want a better
life for them but it is not depending from me. Today I am here in college and in midnight the police
might knock on my door and tell me to leave this country and go back to Kosovo”.
Although he was a plumber in Kosovo, he finds it very difficult to think about his future, saying
“I don’t know the direction of my life”. He feels ashamed that he is young and healthy and fit for
work, but has spent the last 5 years as a “househusband”. His trade is highly in demand in the
UK economy, but he has no prospect of working in this field, or indeed any other. Many other
informants in the EEPP study, such as the young Angolan who dreams of electricity who inspired
the title of this paper, also find the cultural capital (Bourdieu) they bring from home of little
value in their new country, not because the skills themselves have no worth, and not because the
local community would undervalue them, but because under current immigration law they are not
afforded the legal right to practise them. Haxhi finds it almost impossible to imagine himself as a
future member of the ‘plumbing’ community and this seems to impact directly on his investment
in his English language learning. He believes that learning “perfect English” is “important” if he
is to remain in the UK but while he waits for a positive decision from the Home Office his life
has become suspended and his mind is almost constantly elsewhere. As well as being unable to
imagine his future in terms of work, it seems that Haxhi’s learning also belongs to an imaginary
future which is very difficult for him to visualise. It may be that Haxhi has been more motivated
to learn English at other times of his life, and indeed may well be again in the future but for now
his investment seems pointless and any ‘agency’ he may possess as an individual (Ahearn, 2001;
Baynham, this volume) is severely restricted by the societal forces which restrain him.
However, despite having a low level of literacy due to interrupted schooling, Haxhi’s oracy
level is relatively high; like other young men in the EEPP study, some of whom are in the UK with
no families or may have come as unaccompanied minors, he speaks a lot of English outside the
classroom with fellow asylum seekers, neighbours and people in the local community. He also has
close friendships with other students in the class with whom he spends a lot of time. There is no
one in his community at present who speaks Albanian, meaning that a lot of his communication
outside the home is in English. He has a very good relationship with the people in his block who
form a mutually supportive community of asylum seekers and refugees (see Gow, 2005 for an
example in Sydney), particularly with his neighbours who are from Estonia and Russia and with
whom he speaks English even if his wife is present, because it would be rude to do otherwise. Haxhi
does not have access to a defined local English ‘speech community’ into which he might become
socialised as a ‘novice’ speaker of English (see Zuengler & Cole, 2004 for further discussion
and Baynham this volume) but is instead using the resources of his own immediate multilingual
‘community of practice’ and opening up his own opportunities for language and literacy.
Haxhi’s teacher knows a lot about her students and is very sympathetic to the fact that a
lot of them have troubled lives. She finds ILPs the least effective way of knowing about her
students, regarding them as little more than a paper exercise to please funders. Her knowledge
about her students comes from what they divulge in the course of her lessons: she says she is often
 M. Cooke / Linguistics and Education 17 (2006) 56–73 69

“humbled” by what they tell her and wonders how they get out of bed in the morning to be there.
She regards the class as a point of stability in their extremely chaotic lives, something that will not,
like other things, be “here today and gone tomorrow”. She knows that for many of them the class
is important socially and tries to focus on “social” English as well as what she calls “survival”
English and grammar: “there is very much a strong feeling for many of them that when they talk
to me individually er they want to do serious work. But at the same time it’s a big sort of social
opportunity and supporting each other and um having this contact with native speakers that they
don’t get really otherwise apart from sorting problems out. Er that- I think that’s very important
to promote that side as well.“. She knows that Haxhi has major problems accepting his situation
and worries about the fact that he seems to drink a lot. However, as a teacher who also has to get
through a syllabus she finds him lacking in concentration and not taking the lessons as seriously
as she would like “he gets to 12 o’clock right I’m going now. I’ve done enough of this let’s move
on to the next thing”. She also comments on the fact that he plays cards until 4 am with other men
who “let their wives do everything”. The teacher has reached her own conclusion about Haxhi but
there is more than one interpretation; it is possible that he displays this behaviour as a result of
the powerlessness he feels in the rest of his life, and that his lack of concentration in class is due
not only to his anxiety about his legal status but also to the fact that a lot of what is on offer in the
class (i.e. the opportunity to interact with other students) is the one thing that Haxhi gets plenty
of outside. Given the precariousness of Haxhi’s situation it is unclear exactly what might be the
best syllabus for him and others like him, but rehearsing the very interactions he does outside the
classroom seems unlikely to be a solid preparation for the working life he so desires.
Haxhi feels he has lost 5 years from his life. He also says that “people like me” should learn
English and it is clearly true that being able to speak English is an advantage in an English
dominant society. However, asylum seekers who are not permitted to work have little else to do
but become ‘students’ in ESOL classes whether they like it or not, which problematises the issues
of motivation and investment discussed in SLA literature. Haxhi has a trade he can practise now;
indeed people very similar to Haxhi, with trades very similar to his, from countries very similar
to his but with oracy levels much lower than his are working right now with the blessing of the
UK government, in Britain legally as members of the new EU accession countries such as Poland,
Lithuania and the Czech Republic. Haxhi on the other hand is facing gate-keeping of the most
extreme kind and is understandably faltering in his resolve to keep studying English for a very
uncertain future.

3. Conclusion

High levels of motivation, family support and access to ESOL classes are important factors in
successful SLA, but the stories of Haxhi, Mariana, Xun Wang and Dasha show that these are only
part of the story. We also need to consider their lives outside the classroom, their access to the target
language, their past experiences and trajectories (Menard-Warwick, 2005) and their aspirations
for the future before we can talk in terms of their ‘needs’ in any meaningful way. Despite these
learners showing high degrees of individual agency, and despite opportunities afforded by some
ESOL classrooms to maximise this (see Baynham, this volume), there are very powerful factors
constraining individual agency, shown most extremely here in the case of Haxhi. As I show here
in my discussion of the lives and aspirations of four learners, the multiple and changing nature
of their identities means that they have many needs of many different types. In each case these
learners are getting some of their needs met some of the time (Hodge, 2004). All of them say they
are improving and can understand more English, and all of them are less dependent on services
70 M. Cooke / Linguistics and Education 17 (2006) 56–73

such as interpreters or the help of family members or friends. Some, for example Mariana, are
having very important needs met in terms of self esteem and a lessening of marginalisation.
However, despite the considerable positive benefits of their classes, none of the four seem to be
on courses where the teacher is entirely aware of what might be the most appropriate linguistic
input and pedagogy to help them move more quickly on their way towards fulfilling their goals,
even if these goals might be rather humble ones.
Not to know about the lives of the learners in our ESOL classrooms leads to several dangers. The
first is that if teachers have only the ILP or classroom conversations as a way of knowing about their
students, they must in effect invent the lives of their learners outside the classroom, filling in some
parts of the jigsaws by themselves. This can lead to at best false assumptions about a learner based
only on a supposition on behalf of the teacher. No matter how much a teacher encourages students
to open up and talk about their lives in class, a lack of knowledge of individual experience might
lead to a “tribalising” of students (Duff & Uchida, 1997) or a dependence on dominant discourses
which may not serve the interests of the people whose identities they help to construct. These
powerful discourses which dominate the media and political and popular discourse sometimes
need to be resisted by those they construct and those responsible for teaching them, and one way
to do this is to start by listening to real life stories of learners’ lives.
A second danger is that working within a statutory curriculum the learner, despite being subject
to student-centred practices such as differentiation and ILPs, is seen mainly in terms of what he or
she cannot do and what he or she needs to do in terms of matching the standards of the curriculum.
The AECC, with its focus on survival English and pseudo real-world scenarios and text types
shows many features of the type of curriculum known as ‘competence’ curricula much discussed
and critiqued in the USA in the 1980s (Auerbach, 1986; Tollefson, 1986). These curricula were
seen as serving the needs of the state for immigrants to be socialised into low paid positions in
which they generally complied and rarely complained. It is difficult to see the Job Centre Plus
regime in Xun Wang’s story as serving any other purpose apart from this role, despite the attempts
of the teacher to resist it. Furthermore, teachers and learners speak axiomatically about ‘good’
English without a rigorous examination of what this might mean. The model of language and
culture in the AECC may train people ad nauseum to be more ‘polite’, to more efficiently extract
surface meaning from a functional text (see Wallace this volume) and to ask in an appropriate way
for an appointment or for directions, but at all levels it fails to consider other aspects of language
development, for example English as a ‘literate’ language (Wallace, 2002) or the aesthetic and
rhetorical functions of spoken English (Cameron, 2003) or the complex institutional discourses
of the world of work (Baynham, this volume; Roberts, 2004).
ESOL teachers are often very aware of the pitfalls of a planned central curriculum and are
reluctant to be seen to be socialising people for positions way below their actual potential. Knowing
what learners do and how they live outside the classroom may be one way of resisting this trend,
the challenge being of course how to do this in times of heavier teaching loads and the increasing
textualisation of work. The introduction of the ILP has placed the burden of ‘diagnosing’ learners
on the shoulders of the teacher, and the insistence on ‘differentiation’ in the classroom in the form
of worksheets at different levels of ability have created a sometimes overwhelming responsibility
on teachers to cater to the individual ‘needs’ of large classes. Far from helping teachers to know
more about their learners, however, these systems can actually lessen the chances of learners and
teachers to really get to know each other and thus deal creatively together with the real world
concerns learners bring with them to the classroom. To find the resources and time to interview
low level students in their first languages clearly requires a commitment from institutions, but
even in the face of unwillingness of funders, in multilingual environments such as colleges there
 M. Cooke / Linguistics and Education 17 (2006) 56–73 71

are many possibilities of harnessing the resources of higher level learners and other personnel
in creative ways. There are also pedagogies and ways of organising learning, currently sidelined
entirely by Skills for Life which place the learner at the centre of the curriculum in a meaningful
way. These include the Freirean-inspired participatory and problem solving curricula of Auerbach
(1992), Auerbach and Wallerstein (1987) and others (Baynham, 1988) learner journal writing as
described by Peirce-Norton (1995) and learner ethnography as proposed by Roberts et al. (2001).
Whether these student centred curricula can have a place in the Skills for Life strategy is perhaps
the real challenge for ESOL educators and curriculum planners.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Patrick Bushell for his collaboration and help and to Jolanta Stankeviciute, Valentina
Braja and Shirley Tao Liu who carried out the bilingual interviews discussed in this paper.

References

Ahearn, L. (2001). Language and agency. Annual Review of Anthropology, 30, 109–137.
Auerbach, E. R. (1986). Competency-based ESL: One step forward or two steps back? TESOL Quarterly, 20, 411–
427.
Auerbach, E. R. (1992). Making meaning making change. USA: Centre for Applied Linguistics and ERIC.
Auerbach, E. R., & Burgess, D. (1985). The hidden curriculum of survival ESL. TESOL Quarterly, 19, 475–495.
Auerbach, E. R., & Wallerstein, N. (1987). ESL for action: Problem posing at work. Reading MA: Addison Wesley.
Barton, D., Ivanic, R., Appleby, Y., Hodge, R., & Tusting, K. (2004). Adult learners’ lives project: Setting the scene.
London: NRDC. Progress Report.
Baynham, M. (1988). Action and reflection: The Freirean argument in ESL. Language Issues, 12, 6–12.
Benson, P., & Nunan, D. (Eds.). (2004). Learners’ stories: Difference and diversity in language learning. Cambridge:
CUP.
Bernstein, B. (1996). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity. London: Taylor and Francis.
Blackledge, A. (2005). Discourse and power in a multilingual world. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Bloch, A., & Schuster, L. (2005). At the extremes of exclusion: Deportation, detention and dispersal. Ethnic and Racial
Studies, 28(3), 491–512.
Block, D. (2003). The social turn in second language acquisition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Block, D. (2006). Multilingual identities in a global city. In D. Block, & D. Cameron (Eds.), Globalization and language
teaching. Routledge: London.
Blommaert, J., Collins, J., & Slembrouck, S. (2005). Spaces of multilingualism. Language and Communication, 25,
197–216.
Blunkett, D. (2002). Integration with diversity: Globalisation and the renewal of democracy and civil society. In M.
Leonard, & P. Griffith (Eds.), Reclaiming britishness. London: The Foreign Policy Centre.
Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Bremer, K., Roberts, C., Vasseur, M., Simonot, M., & Broeder, P. (1996). Achieving understanding. Harlow: Longman.
Cameron, D. (1995). Verbal hygiene. London: Routledge.
Cameron, D. (2003). Schooling spoken language: Beyond communication? In QCA New perspectives on spoken English
in the classroom. Discussion papers. London: The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.
Campbell, S., & Roberts, C. (forthcoming). Fitting stories into boxes. Journal of Applied Linguistics.
Candlin, C. (2001). General Editor’s Preface. In M. Breen (Ed.), Learner contributions to language learning: New
directions in research. Harlow: Longman.
Carrier, K. (1999). The social environment of second language listening: Does status play a role in comprehension? The
Modern Language Journal, 83(1), 65–79.
Cohen, R. (1997). Global diasporas: An introduction. London: UCL Press.
Cumming, A., & Gill, J. (1992). Motivation or accessibility? Factors permitting Indo-Canadian women to pursue esl
literacy instruction. In B. Burnaby, & A. Cumming (Eds.), Socio-political aspects of ESL in Canada. Toronot: OISE
Press.
The Daily Telegraph. Ten urgent steps to make Britain safer’ 23/7/2005.
72 M. Cooke / Linguistics and Education 17 (2006) 56–73

Department for Education and Skills (DfES) (2001). Adult ESOL Core Curriculum. London DfES.
Duff, P. A., & Uchida, Y. (1997). The negotiation of teachers’ sociocultural identities and practices in postsecondary EFL
classrooms. TESOL Quarterly, 31, 451–486.
Erickson, F., & Schultz, J. (1982). The counsellor as gatekeeper: Social interaction in interviews. In E. Hammel (Ed.),
Language, thought and culture: Advances in the study of cognition. New York: Academic Press.
Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Firth, A., & Wagner, J. (1997). On discourse, communication, and (some) fundamental concepts in SLA research. The
Modern Language Journal, 81(3), 285–300.
Flynn, D. (2005). New borders, new management: The dilemmas of modern immigration policies. Ethnic and Racial
Studies, 28(3), 463–490.
Foner, N. (1997). The immigrant family: Cultural legacies and cultural changes. International Migration Review, 31(4),
961–974.
Freedland, J. (2005). The identity vacuum. The Guardian 3/8/2005.
Goldstein, T. (1996). Two languages at work: Bilingual life on the production floor. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Gordon, D. (2004). I’m tired. You clean and cook: Shifting gender identities and second language socialization’. TESOL
Quarterly, 38(3).
Gow, G. (2005). Rubbing shoulders in the global city: Refugees, citizenship and multicultural alliances in Fairfield,
Sydney. Ethnicities, 5(3), 386–405.
Harper, H., Peirce, B., & Burnaby, B. (1996). English in the workplace for garment workers: A feminist project? Gender
and Education, 8(1), 5–19.
Harris, R. (2003). Language and new ethnicities: Multilingual youth and diaspora Paper 22 Working Papers in Urban
Languages and Literacies: King’s College London.
Hodge, R. (2004). This is not enough for one’s life: Perceptions of living and learning English in Blackburn by students
seeking asylum and refugee status’ in Roberts et al. (2004).
Johnston, R., Forrest, J., & Poulsen, M. (2002). The ethnic geography of EthniCities. Ethnicities, 2(2), 209–235.
Kanno, Y., & Norton, B. (2003). Imagined communities and educational possibilities: Introduction. Journal of Language,
Identity and Education, 2(4), 241–249.
Kibria, N. (1990). Power, patriarchy, and gender conflict in the Vietnamese immigrant community. Gender and Society,
4(1), 9–24.
Kouritzin, S. (2000). Immigrant mothers redefine access to ESL classes: Contradiction and ambivalence. Journal of
Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 21(1).
Kyambi, S. (2005). Beyond black and white: Mapping new immigrant communities. London: Institute of Public Policy
Research.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: CUP.
Leung, C. (2001). English as an additional language: Distinct language focus or diffused curriculum concern? Language
and Education, 15(1), 33–55.
Luke, A. (1996). Genres of power? Literacy education and the production of capital. In R. Hasan, & G. Williams (Eds.),
Literacy in Society. Harlow: Longman.
Menard-Warwick, J. (2005). Intergenerational trajectories and sociopolitical context: Latina immigrants in Adult ESL.
TESOL Quarterly, 39(2), 165–185.
Mitchell, C. (1984). Case studies. In R. Ellen (Ed.), Ethnographic research: A guide to general conduct. London: Academic
Press.
Monbiot, G. (2005). The new chauvinism. The Guardian 9/8/2005.
Moser, C. (1999). A fresh start: Improving literacy and numeracy. London: DfEE.
Murray, D. E. (2004). ESL in adult education. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of research in second language teaching and
learning. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Norton, B. (2000). Identity and language learning: Gender, ethnicity and educational change. Harlow: Longman.
Norton, B. (2001). Non-participation, imagined communities and the language classroom. In M. Breen (Ed.), Learner
contributions to language learning: New directions in research. Harlow: Longman.
Pastor, A., & De Fina, A. (2005). Contesting social space: Narratives of language conflict. In M. Baynham, & A. De Fina
(Eds.), Dislocations/relocations: Narratives of displacement. Manchester: St Jerome.
Pavlenko, A., Blackledge, A., Piller, I., & Teutsch-Dwyer, M. (Eds.). (2001). Multilingualism, second language learning
and gender. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Pavlenko, A., & Blackledge, A. (Eds.). (2004). Negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts. Clevedon, Avon: Mul-
tilingual Matters.
Peirce-Norton, B. (1995). Social identity, investment and language learning. TESOL Quarterly, 29, 9–31.
 M. Cooke / Linguistics and Education 17 (2006) 56–73 73

Rampton, B. (1997). Second language research in late modernity: A response to firth and wagner. The Modern Language
Journal, 81(3), 329–333.
Rampton, B., Harris, R., & Leung, C. (2001). Education in England and Speakers of Languages Other than English. Paper
18 Working Papers in Urban Languages and Literacies: King’s College London.
Ricento, T. (2004). Considerations of identity in L2 learning. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of research in second language
teaching and learning. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Roberts, C. (2004). English in the workplace. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of research in second language teaching and
learning. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Roberts, C., Byram, M., Barro, A., Jordan, S., & Street, B. (2001). Language learners as ethnographers. Clevedon, Avon:
Multilingual Matters.
Roberts, C., Baynham, M., Shrubshall, P., Barton, D., Chopra, P., Cooke, M., Hodge, R., Pitt, K., Schellekens, P., Wallace,
C., & Whitfield, S. (2004). English for speakers of other languages (ESOL)—case studies of provision, learners’ needs
and resources. London: National Centre for Research in Adult Literacy and Numeracy.
Rockhill, K. (1987). Gender, language and the politics of literacy. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 8(2), 153–167.
Sales, R. (2005). Secure borders, safe haven: A contradiction in terms? Ethnic and Racial Studies, 28(3), 445–462.
Shrubshall, P., Chopra, C., & Roberts, C. (2004). We mingle with each other like friends: Heterogeneity, responsibility
and resourcefulness in community classes. In Roberts, et al. (Eds.), Case Studies in ESOL. London: National Centre
for Research in Adult Literacy and Numeracy.
Spack, R. (1997). The rhetorical construction of multilingual students. TESOL Quarterly, 31, 765–774.
Tollefson, J. W. (1986). Functional competencies in the U.S. refugee program: Theoretical and practical problems. TESOL
Quarterly, 20, 649–664.
Wallace, C. (2002). Local literacies and global literacy. In D. Block, & D. Cameron (Eds.), Globalization and language
teaching. London: Routledge.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: CUP.
Wintour, P. (2005). Faith schools warned: Open gates to all or be shut down. The Guardian (15/10/2005).
Wolf, A. (2002). Does Education Matter? Myths about education and economic growth. London: Penguin.
Zuengler, J., & Cole, K. (2004). Language socialisation and second language learning. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of
research in second language teaching and learning. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.