to be incredibly touched by some of the stories of people who don't speak English?

[lessonsintightropes]

The Congolese refugee lady and daughter really touched my heart. It's a fascinating exploration of cultural difference and the issues relating to language learning. I'm sure I'll be flamed for this, but thought that at least one person was hugely deserving of an escape route from an impossible situation.

The ones in this programme were ones who had all been going to classes for at least a year, but hadn't progressed well.

I watched this last night on catch-up with the missus and really enjoyed it. As my partner is Spanish and I work with Spanish, Italian and French as well as English on a daily basis (I also have a good knowledge of Catalan and my German is intermediate having done an A-Level in the language), I am fully aware of the difficulties one can encounter when learning another language so can understand what the people featured on the programme feel (I lived in Spain for two years a couple of years ago) Will most definitely be watching next week.

Is anyone watching tonight? V emotional.

I liked the programme but like others have said I wished they'd given a bit more context and mentioned how difficult it is for people to access English classes. Funding has been cut massively.

I thought Fabien's English was pretty good, it must be so hard to have to start from the beginning when you are used to having the status that being an educated professional brings. And there's the other end of the spectrum when people flee countries like Congo and may be illiterate in their own language - learning English must be so hard.

I have been looking for this thread!

Poor Fabien. I feel so sorry for him. He is well educated and seems like a genuinely nice bloke but he's trapped in a semi-homeless state by not being able to speak the language. All of the people featured seem so nice, i cried a little at Sifa's story last week.

And not in such a serious vein but God, those English people from the north east made my toes curl when they got the wrong end of the stick about staying in a hotel. I had to leave the room.

I know an older professional Russian couple where the husband has a really good job in IT and the wife stays home and basically looks after the grandchildren.

Her decision to almost live in defiance of the fact that that she is not in Russia any more springs from the circumstances under which they left. She and her husband felt almost forced out of Russia during the horrible Yeltsin years and leaving was very traumatic for them but they did it to give their two daughters a chance. Her H was a physicist back in the USSR and she was a professor of Russian lit in a Moscow university. They have managed to carve out a social life for themselves but they spend a fortune on phone calls.

Her job as she has seen it has been to make sure that the grandchildren do not lose their Russian heritage (and of course all the rest of what being a find and active grandmother entails). She chose not to drive although she drove in the USSR. She speaks virtually no English. He learned English so as to get the job to keep them all afloat. They would like to return to Russia some day when the grandchildren are old enough not to need them - this is the hope that keeps them going. Realistically, their daughters and their non-Russian husbands and the grandchildren would not go back with them.

Some people have emotional difficulties associated with leaving that prevent them from diving enthusiastically into the new language and culture, and sometimes they hope their stay will be temporary.

I thought the NE couple were unbelievably lovely. They didn't understand (dunno why they didn't get the translator in to help) but considering how tired they were and their age, they took it really well being turfed out so late and were so sweet and friendly. I would have been at least a bit grumpy tbh.

It is so hard living in a foreign country. It is incredibly difficult to make friends even when you speak the language very well, and almost impossible if you do not speak the language. Which makes contact with english speakers very limited/verging on the impossible. It's a v. difficult vicious circle, esp if you don't work. And of course, without the language it's very difficult to work.

I remember reading something that said that the single biggest indicator of how well you learn the language of the destination country is age at which you arrive there. It outweighs education level and access to classes, and is probably connected with phases of brain development - it is the young who do best in terms of fluency, non-interference of sentence patterns of original language, and accent.