Learning English Through Refugee Stories

Guest: Roberta Baer, PhD, Professor of Anthropology, University of South Florida Learning English is a top priority for refugees who come to America. And a typical reading text in that English class would go something like, “Meg is my best friend. She’s ten. Everyone in our class likes Meg because she’s always happy and she’s very funny. She can ride a bike very fast too.” A text like that covers all the basics for learning English, but imagine if refugees could learn the language through stories that actually resonated with their own experience - like this one about a woman named Ana:  “I’m originally from former Yugoslavia. In 1992, war broke out there. I’m a child of mixed marriage. My mom is Catholic and my dad is Orthodox. The war in Yugoslavia was about religion.  Muslims, Catholics, Orthodox, everybody wanted their part. I didn’t want to be a part of that.” That’s one of dozens of true refugee stories that have been compiled into a reading text for other refugees to use in learning English.