In August of this year I attended the LESLLA
conference in Pittsburgh, USA to show findings
from a 2-year research project conducted in my
hometown in New Zealand. Hamilton, a city of
178,000, receives regular intakes of former
quota refugees through UNHCR. My research
was with 60 of these learners who had limited
or no print literacy in their L1. The participants
came from Wintec, a tertiary educational
institution, and a partner organisation, English
Language Partners New Zealand, who provide
tutoring in homes and ESOL Literacy classes for
their 7000 learners.
The research investigated whether there were
differences in rates of learning between two
groups of adult former-refugee participants:
refugees that had 0-2 years of prior education
and those that had 8 plus years of prior
education. An online digital assessment,
developed by the Tertiary Education
Commission New Zealand, tracks students’
learning progress and was administered at the
beginning and end of every programme.
Learners’ receptive/listening skills and
recognition and selection of 30 familiar
vocabulary items were captured over four
sessions over 18 months. The results showed
that those who had more years of prior
learning learned at a slightly faster rate than those with little or no prior education.