Summer ESB News

ESB: Tell us about your centre, what are your learners like? IW: City Lit has 27,000 students across the year and 53,000 enrolments. It offers a whole range of courses from essential skills through to business and the arts. We have a wide range of ESOL learners: 25% of them are unemployed, while many of them are migrant workers, and others are refugees. ESB: What is a typical progression route for City Lit ESOL Learners? IW: We focus on employability and expression in our department to encourage natural progression, and we find that they often correlate. We work with a number of employers and run some bespoke courses with them. Whilst this focus on employment-based vocabulary is important, the everyday ‘water cooler’ conversation is just as crucial to progression. Everyone’s progression route is different, so at City Lit we try to create a portfolio of flexible courses to suit their lives.

ESB: What is your current role? IW: I’m Head of Programme for Essential Skills at City Lit in London. Essential Skills are the universal skills which form the bedrock to other competencies. In our department we orient our courses according to the principles of participation, progression and expression, and develop skills which can be applied inside and outside the workplace. IW: I have been involved with ESOL since 2001, so nearly 20 years now. The fact that we are beings of language continues to fascinate me. Language is simultaneously something alien but where we have to find a home. This interplay between being displaced and placed by language is something at the heart of ESOL in a multitude of ways. This is very much exemplified in ESOL. ESB: What attracted you to ESOL?

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