An Empowerment Tool for Teaching English Effectively to Refugees: A Case Study of Syrian Adult Refugees in the UK

There is a growing demand today to fill the gap in the literature with studies that focus on teaching English to adult refugees who are illiterate or have had interrupted education and no English proficiency. This group has been ignored because ESOL courses are not designed to serve their needs, namely, to be self-reliant and socially integrated. This paper shares my personal experience with six Syrian adult refugees, 2 females and 4 males ranging in age from 26 to 52, with either interrupted elementary education or illiteracy. They had no English language proficiency and could neither speak nor understand English at all. Their first language was Arabic. The rote learning approach was used as an empowerment tool to teach self-reliance in speaking and listening when dealing with these participants’ priority themes. The approach is based on memorization using both repetition and recall. Their remarks of progress towards self-reliance varied due to age and motivational factors. Four participants moved from A0 level to A1+, while the other two reached A2 level. Gaining self-reliance helped them to socially integrate, find a job, and gain greater self-confidence. Results of the study might be useful to teachers who are involved in teaching English to refugees as volunteers and to refugees’ organizations to shift from relying totally on interpretation to rote learning when specifically dealing with this group of refugees.


Review of Literature
Many refugees have left their countries to flee ongoing violence and persecution. Different countries have hosted these refugees, including the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, and some other Arab countries. The refugees have different educational experiences; some have academic qualifications, but some have not ever attended school. Teaching English to refugees is a vital need because not being able to communicate in English makes refugees feel socially isolated and makes it difficult to find a job to live a more inclusive life in their new country (Hek, 2005;Rutter, 2006;McBrien, 2005). In 2016, the United Kingdom, for instance, announced it would have an extra £ 10 m available over five years to teach English to Syrian refugees arriving under the Government Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (VPRS). There are two key instructional areas when teaching English to refugees: Working with young people for English as an additional language (EAL) and working with adults in English for speakers of other languages (ESOL).
A review of the literature shows that there are several studies on teaching English to refugees. The biggest contribution was found in an essay collection edited by Mallows in 2012 entitled Innovations in English Language Teaching for Migrants and Refugees. It focuses on innovations in Teaching English to migrants and refugees and offers the reader innovative and inspiring experiences of ESOL and EAL teachers who have taught adults and children. These essays discuss educational innovations in primary, secondary, ongoing education, and adult ESOL refugee education. Methods include writing bilingual stories, focusing on vocabulary, raising awareness of the importance of learning the second language and descriptions of how the process occurs. There are stories of migrants and the learning models as well as support received from their schools. These accounts demonstrate the important role schools can play to meet the language needs of refugees. A personal narrative approach is also used to enhance student participation. The teachers' professional development is focused on as an innovation for teaching refugees. A creative ESOL approach using an arts and language program is explored and seen as effective in making students become active in their learning. Emotional support, use of mobile technologies, reading circles, and a learner-centered ESOL class are more innovative ideas that are discussed in this volume. Meyer (2006) criticizes the operation of the Development Assistance for Refugee-hosting areas and its approach (DAR) in Uganda, noting certain flaws that challenge the notion of "empowerment toward self-reliance". She then suggests a full re-examination of the approach to produce better policy for the future. The issue of refugees' language learning, however, is not discussion in her research. Griffiths (2001) investigates the ESOL course provided to asylum seekers in London and other locations. Barriers to success, such as a shortage of classes and qualified ESOL teachers, a lack of English learning for professional purposes, and funding are highlighted. Bajwa, et al.'s (2017) qualitative study is an attempt to explore the various educational barriers that face refugees who are interested in obtaining a higher degree in Canada. These include evaluating credentials, funding, and accessing online resources. This study proposes possible solutions that can also be implemented by institutions in Canada. Rebecca (2005) looked closely at the individual experiences of seven refugees when learning English by following their experience from arrival to the time when the study was conducted. All cases reported in the study were successful due to certain factors, such as using the language outside the classroom, relevance of ESOL lessons to the refugees' day-to-day experiences, learning about the UK culture, and mixing with English speakers.
Warriner's 2007 investigates the relationship between language learning and sense of belonging through exploring the experience of Sudanese women refugees in America. These results were found to be influential for new arrivals especially.
Little's (undated) paper describes the Integrate Ireland Language and Training approach implemented by the Irish government to teach refugees intensive English language. Using that approach, classes are continuous and intensive for one year, and learning and training are integrated. This approach is found to be successful and the outcomes are noticeably fruitful. Dooley (2009) indicated that many ESL teaching approaches for teaching English as a second language were not effective when teaching refugee students (Sandra & Taylor 2007) and proposed a different approach based on teaching language alongside actual life content in Australia.
Hans-Jurgen and  called for a tailored language program that considers the refugees' linguistic, cultural identities, and life situations and found them to be important factors to achieve successful integration. Nieuwboer and Rood (2016) proposed an alternative method to support migrant illiterate mothers for social integration. It is socially oriented rather than being only literacy oriented. The focus of this approach is daily and family life, and the results demonstrated progress in both language acquisition and social integration for this group.
Review of related literature shows the urgent demand to address the needs of this ignored group; namely illiterate adult with zero English background refugees through implementing a suitable empowerment tool to teach them English outside class room and encourage them to be self-reliant.

Adult Refugees English Learning in the UK
Learning the local language is important to achieve an inclusion strategy that will enable refugees to become part of the society they have joined, rebuild their lives, and contribute to that society. The government has a key role to play in refugee integration and focuses on teaching English as a vital tool. Unemployed refugees age 19 and older are eligible for an ESOL course. ESOL is an English for Speakers of Other Languages qualification that is provided to refugees who need English in order to communicate in daily life. Adult ESOL is funded by the government like other further education courses in England are. It has five levels, and refugees who apply for British citizenship must reach ESOL Entry Level 3 (House of Commons Library, 2017). In 2016, the Government funded the ESOL program with an additional £10 million for the delivery of ESOL courses to Syrian Refugees who are under VPRS.

A Focus on Syrian Refugees
The Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (VPRS) is intended to resettle 20,000 Syrians in need of protection for a new life in the UK (Home Office, 2017). Syrian refugees are distributed equally across the country, and at least 397 Syrian refugees were resettled in Wales according to figures from the Home Office. Swansea, for instance, welcomed Syrian refugees and supported them in different ways through voluntary and charity organizations.
These Syrians used to have high literacy rates, but their schools were considered to be old-fashioned and based on rote learning. Arabic was the teaching language, and English was rarely studied or used. Consequently, Syrian refugees found the transition into a new community harder because they could not speak English and communicate with the locals. Also, some male and female Syrian refugees had not received any formal education at all, but they could still read and write, but in Arabic only. Adult refugees older than 35 with no formal education struggled the most with language and integration into the society. Some were looking for jobs, while others needed to learn how to handle their daily routine needs.
Like other refugees, Syrians are supported by the government and the community as well. Volunteering and charity organizations participate in the refugee support project and offer different services to refugees to fill any gaps in provision, such as case work support, interpretation help, job search, advice and guidance, benefits registration, and any other services badly needed.

Volunteering with EYST
The Ethnic Youth Support Team (EYST) was established in 2005 by ethnic minorities in Swansea and funded by those from the community to deliver education, employment, and health services to ethnic minorities and refugees. From 2017 until 2018, I volunteered with them as an interpreter for the Syrian refugees since my mother tongue is Arabic. The Syrians I served were males and females between 18-52 years old who had only had either interrupted elementary education or no formal education at all. Their arrival date varied from between 3 weeks to one year of the time I met them. Their English language proficiency was zero upon arrival. They were taking ESOL classes, but these classes were not helping them communicate at all, and thus due to their ages, they were at a critical phase of learning (Birdsong, 1999) and had a zero English background. They would call on an interpreter every time they needed to communicate in English. They felt socially isolated and dependent as a result.

Aim of the Study
The aim of this study is to add to the literature an innovative experience in English language teaching provided to illiterate adult refugees who have not received any formal education and have a zero background in English. ESOL courses do not fit all refugees' needs, and there should be further development to achieve the desired goals of social integration for all refugees and especially adequately support illiterate refugees (Plutzar & Ritter, 2008). These current ESOL courses focus on in-class teaching with a fixed curriculum and teacher-centered. Differences between native learners and refugee learners and among the refugee learners themselves are too often ignored (Jerks, Bhatia, & Lou, 2013). Consequently, this group of refugees is unable to run their daily lives and live independently. Instead, they are regularly facing stress and alienation. The method proposed here is an alternative that uniquely focuses on this group and adopts an empowerment approach to help them achieve self-reliance.

Empowerment and Self-Reliance
Empowerment refers to the process of gaining authority and power (Arendt, 1968). This term is implemented in varied forms, including social work, community psychology, economics, law, gender, and workplace management (Rappapon, 2008;Zimmerman, 2000;Potterfield, 1999;Cotula, 2007;Adams, 2008). Olaoye (2013) demonstrated the importance of language as a tool of youth empowerment. He believes that language education can empower Nigerian youth to be able to contribute to national development. According to him, youth can escape poverty and find good jobs and build a bridge to the future through learning the language. Edith (2009) argues that language is a source of empowerment when it is also seen as a tool of authority. The article further points out that an understanding of English is a positive tool to use when accessing knowledge. Indeed, Sankar and Suresh (2016) link English language learning to more employability and empowerment in the business world and other related fields.
Self-reliance is generally defined as the ability to do tasks for yourself to meet your own needs. The word "self-reliance" became a term when it was used as the title of Emerson's Essay in 1841 and it was then mostly used in politics and economics. Meyer (2006) criticized the Self-Reliance Strategy as a program used for refugees in Uganda that caused suffering for those refugees because it entailed dealing with a reduction in food, health care, and needed services. The self -reliance concept, however, was adopted by many language teachers as an end unto itself. It is seen as a characteristic of a good learner who is ready to work independently and take charge of developing needed skills (Ekah, 2012

Empowerment with Language for Accessing Self-Reliance for Adult Illiterate Syrian Refugees
I volunteered with EYST from 2017-2018 as an interpreter for those Syrian refugees who came to UK under the VPRS. I served 28 refugees, aged 18-52 years old, both males and females. The literate young Syrian refugees joined the ESOL classes and needed little support in understanding their mail and energy bills, opening bank accounts, writing a CV, and applying for a part-time job, but they learned quickly and started to depend on themselves and rarely asked for support within only 4-6 months, whereas, illiterate older refugees suffered a lot more in different ways as they personally reported.
They reported that they were not benefiting from the ESOL classes because the classes were designed for literates who had some knowledge background and could basically read and write in their mother tongue and have some English background as well. They also complained that important services, such as seeing a doctor or attending a job interview, were delayed due to a shortage of Arabic interpreters and difficulty in traveling to see them. They felt isolated, reliant, and not self-confident. As an English instructor with 30 years' experience in TEFL, I pointed to the vital need to empower refugees with greater English skills outside the classroom to reach the self-reliance stage. This paper discusses applying the rote learning approach to 6 illiterate adult Syrian refugees and traces their stages of improvement and their gains. The duration of the study will be 10 months and focuses on illiterate adult Syrian refugees in Swansea, Wales, UK. It uses their initials in this paper for privacy.

Participants
This paper is a case study, and its participants were six Syrian refugees that I served as an interpreter in Swansea. They included 2 females and 4 males who had either interrupted elementary education or were illiterate. Their ages ranged from 26 -52. They had no English language proficiency and could not speak or understand English at all. Their first language was Arabic.

Case SU
This 32 year old female Syrian refugee arrived 5 months before I met her. She is married with no children. She had breast cancer and needed regular visits to the breast cancer center. She canceled some of her scheduled visits due to a lack of an interpreter even though her medical condition was critical.

Case A
This 39 year old male Syrian refugee arrived 3 months before I met him. He is married with 4 children. He used to work as a painter before moving to the UK. He was looking for a job but speaking English and writing a CV were the main obstacles.

Case ME (Female)
This 26 year old female Syrian refugee arrived 4 months before I met her. She is married and recently pregnant. She is not working and is not looking for a job. She needs to see the GP on regular basis and visit the main hospital now and then for an Ultra Sound and blood test as a follow-up.

Case H
This 52 year old male Syrian refugee arrived around one year before I met him. His children are grown and self-dependent. He faces problems reading mail, paying bills, contacting the council to report a maintenance issue, shop, and do other daily activities. He used to come from his place by bus to EYST for assistance, and sometimes he is served if there is an available interpreter. Too often he was given an appointment that was often 1-2 weeks in the future, which was very inconvenient and not at all helpful for his needs.

Case M (Male)
This 42 year old male Syrian refugee arrived only 2 weeks before I met him. He is married and has 2 boys who attend elementary school. He approached the center for an interpreter to come with him to visit the school and talk about the performance of his boys and help him understand their school reports.

Case SA
This 28-year old male Syrian refugee arrived 7 months before I met him. He has been offered a part time job in a small restaurant, but language remains a barrier for him.

Rote Learning as an Empowerment Approach
Contempt for memorization as a learning method is a new attitude, as it is regarded as both old-fashioned and destructive. It is known as rote learning and defined as the memorization of information based on repetition. Rote memorization has its supporters (Iqbal & Ahmad, 2015;Santrock, 2011) and its opponents (Hilgard, Irvine & Whipple, 1953;Mayer, 1992). This method has both advantages and disadvantages. Among the advantages are the quick and easy recall of basic facts and development of foundational knowledge. Being repetitive and not allowing for a deeper understanding of knowledge are some of its disadvantages. In contrast, meaningful learning involves a deeper understanding to be long lasting; however, that kind of learning takes longer to achieve, and it has to be specifically tailored to each learner's needs.
In my first month with the participants, I discovered that they had excellent memorization skills and had memorized many verses of the Quran (the Muslim sacred book) since childhood. In this study, the rote learning method was used because first it suited the cases in the sense that it was activating a learning process the participants were familiar with and confident about using. Secondly, the time factor played a vital role with the cases I dealt with and one of the advantages of rote learning is that it is both quick and easy. Some useful features of meaningful learning were implemented too. For instance, the materials used were precisely tailored to serve the urgent and constant needs of the participants. They received explanations of the meaning of related vocabulary and were trained on how to pronounce these words correctly. The process of applying this method took place in different stages as follows: A. Data collection The European Language Portfolio (ELP) for adult migrants learning the language of the host country is partly used in this study. ELP has three components: • A language passport that provides the learners with language proficiency and qualification; • A language biography focuses on goals and self-assessment; • A dossier is a learner portfolio in which the learner keeps samples of work that demonstrate his/her achievement and progress in learning L2. (Little, 2016) ELP was developed in parallel with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). It has different types of forms for teachers to use with immigrants (Simpson, 2012). Due to the A0 level of these participants' English language proficiency, all the forms used were translated into Arabic and filled in by the researcher because not all the participants could read or write in Arabic. Two forms from the language passport component were used in this study: My personal identity form (see Appendix A.) and my learning and linguistic identity (see Appendix B.). These two forms were used to collect details about the participants, such as name, address, email, future work, nationality, etc., and assess their L2 proficiency. They were also translated into Arabic because the participants could not understand them (see Table 1 and Table 2).  On the language biography component, Part 1 was used to identify the learner's learning priority and self-assessment for L2 learning (Appendix C.). See Table 3 below Another form used from the ELP was the priorities form (see Appendix D.). Here the participants' themes they believed were important to learn and their reasons for choosing these themes were recorded. They were encouraged to add other themes if those were not included in the form (see Table 4).

B. Assessment tools
The CEFR assessment grid was used as the tool to assess the participants' level of proficiency in speaking and listening only (see Appendix E.) (CEFR; Council of Europe, 2001). This grid was slightly adjusted to measure the proficiency and progress for the participants' priority themes. The A1 and A2 checklists for speaking and listening with some adjustments to suit the identified themes were used (see Appendices F & G) to trace the progress of the participants (Little, 2012).

C. Materials
After identifying the priority themes of the participants and interpreting for them 3-4 times every two weeks, the need to customize suitable materials became apparent. The topics were specified, and their content was designed to have simple short sentences and easy vocabulary in order to serve the participants' needs and proficiency levels well. The content was also compiled to serve the following learning targets: For each topic, there were subtitles. For instance, to visit the cancer center, there was the introductory part where the patient had to give her personal details, her medical history, and the reason for the visit. The second part was about routine medical investigations, such as blood screening, mammogram, Ultra Sound, taking a biopsy etc.
The third part was about the follow-up visit to get results and get another appointment and medication as well as a treatment plan. Working as a painter involves using different paint colors and shades; naming furniture and their parts; negotiating prices; and handling problems and complaints.

D. Rote learning implementation
This learning process took place gradually as follows: Observation: In this stage the participant was asked to observe me while I was interpreting to get a general idea about the issues being dealt with and how to answer them. It lasted from 2-3 visits; Recording: Here all possible questions and answers related to the target theme were recorded in my voice in English and Arabic on their mobile phones for each part and separately to avoid confusion; Memorizing: The answers were recalled by repeating them several times and understanding the questions; Recalling: Being able to give the answers by heart; Repeating, memorizing, and recalling; Allowing the participant to take a small part in the task being performed to answer some of the easy questions, for instance; Once the first part was memorized and mastered, the participant moved to the second part with more self-confidence and self -reliance while at the same time still recalling the first part; New vocabulary: It was gradually introduced, and only easy words and simplified sentences were used; The process took ten months, excluding holidays and weekends.

Results and Discussion
Progress check lists for listening and speaking were used with each theme to record participants' progress. The results were scored, analyzed, and reflected in Table 6 below. A progress line was drawn to demonstrate the effect of the rote learning as an empowerment tool for achieving self-reliance (see Table 7) Several progress remarks and the evidences for each participant were pointed out. SU's listening and speaking skills improved when dealing with her theme, which related to her health condition (see Table 8).  She can produce full simple sentences about her personal details and medical condition and can ask short questions about a procedure and her next appointment SU showed progress in listening and speaking skills as well as in achieving self-reliance. At the beginning, she had no self-confidence to speak, but after some time and more encouragement and explaining her urgent need to be self-reliant to save effort and money, she started to gradually interact. Her health condition was a motivating factor for her to memorize and recall the vocabulary and the sentences especially designed for her theme and produce them in a later stage. Participant A started working in a small charity shop where he interacted only with the supervisor. After gaining greater self-confidence, he started to deal directly with the clients. A was motivated by his need for a job to earn money and provide his family their previous standard of living before the war in Syria. He has reported lately that he is now self-reliant and not calling for an interpreter like he did before. When I first met him, he was not able to write his CV, but now he is directing his friends on how to do it based on his own version. Participant ME achieved a higher progress rate when compared to the other participants. That might be due to her young age, as learning another language and memorizing was faster (Fathman, 2006;Tohidian, 2009).ME was also highly motivated as a new mom who was eager to learn and know everything about her new baby. H showed slow progress due to his age and poor memory. He kept memorizing things repeatedly, but then struggled with recalling them. H achieved partial self-reliance in the sense that he started to make fewer visits to the center to seek translation support. Being a single dad was a learning motivator for this participant to progress and reach self-reliance. It was very difficult for him to find an interpreter on the same day of the parents' gatherings, so he often missed them, but now he can go alone and talk to the teachers by himself. Fast progress in SA's self -reliance was noted and that might due to his age and language immersion. He practiced the language intensively with native speakers and interacted with the co -workers in English.

Conclusion
The need to support illiterate refugees or those with interrupted education who have no English language proficiency is vital because their need for greater self-reliance is too often ignored. The fact that the currently designed ESOL courses do not meet their urgent needs and do not take into consideration their language and education levels and do not give them the opportunity to practice the language outside classrooms, makes finding a suitable strategy an important demand.
This study clearly adds to the literature an innovative practice for practical experience in English Language teaching to those illiterate adult refugees who have not received formal education and have a zero English background. The study activates a traditional method of learning called rote learning, which is based on memorizing and recalling. The participants were six adult Syrian refugees, illiterate or with interrupted education and with no English language proficiency.
The results showed progress in the participants' speaking and listening ability when dealing with their priority themes. All reported needing less reliance on interpreters and demonstrating more self-reliance that saved them both time and effort in their new environments.