|
|||||||
UK as a diverse society |
|||||||
023 Teresa Hough |
click to read > 1. Mary: Theresa, hello. Thank you for saying that you'd be interviewed. 2. Teresa: Right. 3. Mary: Can you tell us to begin with a little bit of what you do in your job? 4. Teresa: Well, in my job I teach English at the Pakistani Centre at Entry Level One. I also teach in other places in classes. I teach Polish, I also teach Polish at Bradford University. 5. Mary: Okay. Alright, so a lot of teaching. 6. Teresa: Yes. 7. Mary: Okay. But you also do a lot of other things. You do a lot of volunteering as well I think to begin with tell us about that. 8. Teresa: I do a lot of volunteering especially for the Polish community. I organize their Polish school on a Saturday morning. So every Saturday I'm with a group of fifty four children from 9.30 to 1 o'clock, where we teach children Polish and Polish culture and Polish language. And now with the arrival of many Polish people after Poland joined the EU, I help them with finding jobs, finding doctors, finding our college. 9. Mary: Yes. 10. Teresa: ... so they can enrol in English classes. I also help them with job interviews. Go interpret at various places. 11. Mary: So that's like a. That's like a full-time job again isn't it? 12. Teresa: Yes. 13. Mary: You mentioned the Polish culture that you teach the children at the Polish Centre. Can you tell us a bit more about what that involves? 14. Teresa: It involves them learning to dance, learning about various Polish customs, traditions. We always have special days, special concerts for special occasions that are connected with Polish history. They also do a bit of singing, any language, and it also involves their religion because the priest teaches children there as it's mainly the Catholic community. So it's around the religion, around traditions and that. 15. Mary: Right. And how many people do you say altogether, how many adults are involved with that? 16. Teresa: In the school we have six classes. 17. Mary: Right. 18. Teresa: ... because we start from playgroup which are three year old and it's up to A level. Children are taking exams and so we have six classes on different levels. 19. Mary: Right, okay, thank you. So you've touched on, if you like, the cultural needs of the children. What would you say are the needs of the Polish community in Leeds or maybe they've changed? 20. Teresa: They change depending on the age of people, on their needs. The newer people I think need maybe more education, more meeting with others, joining other groups, finding out about life in Leeds in general. A lot of people want to learn English so they can find better jobs because there are a lot of educated people with degrees that cannot find jobs because their English is not very good. So it's for the older people maybe, more occasions where they can meet together and have some kind of get together celebrations, social time, yes. 21. Mary: Oh, that's very interesting. So obviously teaching the children and young people about their Polish culture is really important to you and to others. How far do you think it's possible for those children and young people to retain a sense of a Polish identity alongside a British identity and how far do you think that's something that they should do? 22. Teresa: Well, I can give you an example from my own children. They can speak Polish. They both have A level in Polish and they were born in this country. I think an extra language and the knowledge of other cultures enriched them. The other day, for example, my son got a place in the university thanks to extra language. 23. Mary: Right. 24. Teresa: And he also has now found a job in Poland, thanks to the knowledge of the language. And he meets a lot of Polish people who arrived lately, organizes football groups for them. So I think it's quite important that you kind of know who you are and what you are. 25. Mary: Yes. 26. Teresa: You maybe share your roots and maybe share both cultures as they do because they were born here, they went to English schools, but they also understand my tradition and my culture. 27. Mary: Thank you. So of. You said that having if you like two cultures enriches your children. But obviously within British society there's other experiences of intolerance to people that are different and so on. So what do you think British society, or how could we within British society to make our society more tolerant do you think? 28. Teresa: Maybe integrated together more. Integrating more with other. maybe knowing more about each other, educating, meeting more often so people can learn from one another, learn about other cultures, about the history a little bit about the traditions, why they do things that they do. 29. Mary: Learning about one another? 30. Teresa: Yeah, maybe. |
||||||
Try to spell some of the key words used most by this speaker.
Hold your mouse over the image to see the word.
|
|||||||