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Language and Education

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Movement and loss: progression in

tertiary education for migrant students
a b
James Simpson & Melanie Cooke
a
School of Education , University of Leeds , Leeds, LS2 9JT,
United Kingdom
b
Department of Education and Professional Studies and the
Centre for Language, Discourse and Communication , King's
College , London, United Kingdom
Published online: 18 Dec 2009.

To cite this article: James Simpson & Melanie Cooke (2009) Movement and loss: progression
in tertiary education for migrant students, Language and Education, 24:1, 57-73, DOI:
10.1080/09500780903194051

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 Language and Education
Vol. 24, No. 1, January 2010, 57–73

Movement and loss: progression in tertiary education for migrant

students
James Simpsona∗ and Melanie Cookeb
a
School of Education, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom; b Department of
Education and Professional Studies and the Centre for Language, Discourse and Communication,
King’s College London, United Kingdom

This article is about progression in further and higher education for migrants to
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the United Kingdom who are users of non-standard varieties of English. The focus
is on the struggles of Tobi, a first-generation migrant Nigerian student. Tobi’s story
describes the local barriers he must navigate in order to gain access to the courses he
wishes to follow, both at the college where he is studying and at the local university to
which he wishes to progress. These barriers include mastery of academic English and
assessments of literacy. The contrast is drawn out between Tobi’s aspirations to progress
‘up’ along an educational trajectory, and his actual experience of moving ‘downwards’.
Widening participation and the stratification of higher education are seen in relation to
other processes and structures that impact on Tobi’s experience: migration, social class
and capital, language and language ideologies, and academic literacy. Tobi’s trajectory
also exemplifies the tension between his own language use and the variety of English he
is expected to orient towards. We end the paper with a discussion of models of academic
literacy, which may provide a starting point for addressing the pedagogic challenges
faced by Tobi and his teachers.
Keywords: migration; language ideology; academic literacy; widening participation

Introduction
This paper is about progression in Further (FE) and Higher Education (HE) for migrants to
the United Kingdom who are users of non-standard varieties of English. Our focus is on the
learning trajectory of a first-generation migrant Nigerian student, Tobi1 , on his struggles to
gain access to university, and on the teachers who wish to support him. Through the telling
of Tobi’s story we describe the local barriers he must navigate in order to gain access to
the courses he wishes to follow, both at Midbury College, the college of Further Education
where he is studying and at Eastbrooke University, the local Higher Education Institution
(HEI) to which he wishes to progress. These barriers include mastery of the academic
English that he must achieve before he can move on, and the assessments of literacy he
must undergo.
We draw out a contrast between the aspirations which students like Tobi have to progress
‘up’ along an educational trajectory, and their actual experience of moving ‘downwards’.
The aspirations of such students are reinforced by the discourses of widening participation,
and the impression these promote that a university is within the reach of everyone. However,
the discourses of widening participation rarely acknowledge the challenges faced by the

∗
Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
ISSN 0950-0782 print / ISSN 1747-7581 online
C 2010 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/09500780903194051
http://www.informaworld.com
 58 J. Simpson and M. Cooke

high numbers of students who are users of non-standard varieties of English (see Preece
2009a), speakers of languages other than English or people socialised in school systems
very different to those in the United Kingdom (see Leung and Safford 2005). Pre-university
courses do not often address the complex, sometimes hidden, features of academic literacy
and are, therefore, unable to make them transparent to these students. This contributes to
the downward movement described in this paper. A further factor, which we discuss, is the
range of gate-keeping practices such as literacy tests faced by ‘non-traditional’ students.
These fail to take their education and linguistic contexts into account, focusing instead on
surface features of writing, such as punctuation and correct spelling.
The paper begins with a discussion of widening participation and the stratification of
HE in relation to other processes and structures that impact on Tobi’s experience: migration,
social class and capital, language and language ideologies and academic literacy. Next we
contextualise Tobi’s story with a description of his college and his course. We then turn to
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Tobi’s trajectory, and to the tension between his own language use and the variety of English
he is expected to orient towards. The paper ends with a discussion of models of academic
literacy, which may provide a starting point for addressing the pedagogic challenges faced
by Tobi and his teachers.

Background
Widening participation in higher education
Since 2003 HE in Britain has followed a policy of widening participation (see Preece
2009a). This requires universities to commit to attracting students from backgrounds that
previously have not been represented in HE. These students are sometimes known as ‘non-
traditional’ students, and are typically from lower socio-economic and/or minority ethnic
backgrounds and mature students who are over school-leaving age. Widening participation
in HE, promoted in meritocratic terms as affording opportunities to all those who have
the talent to go to university, is not a purely ‘unproblematically positive advance’ (as
noted by Reay et al. 2001). Some see within it not the combating of social inequality
but rather new ways of reproducing it. Collins, for example, states that modern Higher
Education is ‘a massive, stratified system which allocates different kinds of knowledge to
differently placed students’ (1999, 270). In the United Kingdom this stratification happens
through the division of universities into ‘old’ (traditional and elite) and ‘new’ or ‘post-1992’
(recently created and in some cases less prestigious), with the majority of places at the old
universities being taken up by those from more privileged backgrounds, and working-class
students being disproportionately represented in new universities. Similar divisions exist
along ethnic lines; despite a rise in the number of people applying to university from
minority ethnic communities, a significant racial divide exists between the ‘old’ and the
‘new’ universities (Reay et al. 2001). When the working class, ethnic and linguistic minority
students at Tobi’s college apply to university, it is more likely to be to the new universities
such as Eastbrooke University, which themselves are prone to disadvantageous positioning
in league tables, and suffer from the need to compete with their more prestigious and often
wealthier counterparts, the old universities.
Non-traditional students may follow the same academic entry requirement route to
university as school students in the United Kingdom but many are also likely to come via
‘Access’ courses. The route into university for school students typically follows a pattern
where General Certificate in Secondary Education (GCSE) qualifications are taken in a
 Language and Education 59

number of subjects by secondary school students at age 16, before they embark on a two-
year A (Advanced)-Level course. A Levels, normally taken in three or four subjects, have
two parts: AS (advanced subsidiary), taken at age 17, and A2 at age 18. Access courses,
usually of one-year duration, have been developed as an alternative route into HE by FE
colleges, often in collaboration with local universities. These are designed for students who
do not hold the educational qualifications (i.e. A Levels) required for entry to HE. When we
met Tobi at Midbury College, he was on a course known informally by students and tutors
in his college as a ‘pre-Access’ (PA) course, and was hoping to gain entry to an Access
programme at the college the following year.

Widening participation, language and academic literacy

One debate pertinent to this paper arising from widening participation is around student
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writing, or academic literacy, increasingly seen as a ‘problem’, both within universities and
in discourses that circulate more widely. Lillis and Turner point out that complaints about
student writing have coincided with widening participation, and ‘although explicit causal
links are not usually made, there is often an implied deficit model at work’ (2001, 57).
Students who aspire to university from working class, ethnic minority and, in Tobi’s case,
linguistic minority migrant backgrounds are increasingly subject to teaching and testing,
which is specifically targeted at this supposed deficit. Language, particularly academic
literacy, is thus a key site in FE and HE where complex processes of stratification along
class and ethnic lines are played out.
Students like Tobi, bi- and multilinguals, who have migrated in adolescence or early
adulthood, differ both from the elite fee-paying overseas students welcomed by universities
and from people who have received years of socialisation in the English education system
(‘home students’). They are highly diverse both linguistically and culturally, and include
people who have learned English as another/additional language (English for Speakers of
Other Languages, or ESOL) as well as speakers of English-based creoles and varieties of
English, such as those spoken in ex-colonies in Asia and Africa. At Midbury College there
is a large population of people from various African countries who seem to cause particular
problems in classification and pedagogy. Educated through the medium of English in former
British colonies such as Ghana and Nigeria, these students are not classed as ‘ESOL’ by the
college but are widely viewed as having serious difficulties with English, and in particular
with literacy. However, because these students are regarded as neither ESOL nor ‘home’
students they often fall between two stools in the support they receive. More seriously, as
we discuss later, they are also subjected to common sense, but often erroneous, ideas –
language ideologies – about their linguistic repertoires and the varieties of English they
use, which impact on their tuition and the assessment regimes they must navigate on their
way to HE.

Social class, language and migration

Migrant students, especially those who speak non-prestigious varieties of English or lan-
guages other than English, form a significant section of the widening participation popu-
lation and thus should be included in the analyses of the increased stratification this has
brought in its wake. There are tight connections between access to HE, social class, language
and migration. Social class issues suffuse the education of migrants, but class itself, writes
Collins:
 60 J. Simpson and M. Cooke

. . . tends to be misrecognized, to be noticed through its effects: as a feature of the kinds of jobs
people might have, as ‘low’ or ‘high’ autonomy; or as a puzzling aspect of the valuing and
devaluing of bilingualism, so that some people’s learning a second language is a wonderful
attribute, while for others to do the same is viewed as a problem. (2006, 4)

In Britain’s multilingual global cities, notions of social class can no longer appeal to the
quite fixed categories and distinctions that underpin ‘lay’ definitions. An alternative view
of class relates it to various forms of capital – economic, surely, but also social, cultural
and linguistic (Bourdieu 1986, 1991) – which accrue to an individual at any one place and
time. Capital refers not only to financial resources but also to social resources (status and
affiliations) and knowledge, skills, linguistic repertoire and education that are valued by the
dominant or hegemonic group. For migrants, such as Tobi, as we discuss below, specific
problems in the education system lie in converting their cultural and linguistic capital into
a new currency (Reay et al. 2001, 871) as well as overcoming the linguistic gate-keeping
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barriers in their path.

Cases such as Tobi’s pose more puzzles. Because of the contrastive financial situations
of students from these countries, universities in the United Kingdom invest large sums of
money in attracting students from some markets (e.g. China), but not others (e.g. Nigeria).
But why do academic departments expend time and effort in understanding the academic
literacy challenges of certain overseas students but not those from ethnic and linguistic
minorities at home? Why have academic institutions failed to respond sensitively to the
linguistic diversity of heteroglossic, multilingual global cities such as London, insisting
instead on increasingly narrow notions of ‘correctness’ and accuracy (with some exceptions,
see Leung and Safford 2005; Preece 2006, 2009b; Preece and Godfrey 2004; Scalone and
Street 2006)? These questions are, of course, linked to wider structures and processes such
as globalisation and, as we have already signalled, social class, the stratification of HE and
ideologies related to language.

Language ideologies and capital

The site of education as one of the main sites of the reproduction of social inequality has
long been a major area of study in sociology (Bernstein 1996; Bourdieu and Passeron
1977). Bourdieu’s work on the forms of capital (1986) and its extension to language (1991),
affords a link between the learning and the use of academic English and the matters of
power that are fundamental to the difficulties faced by users of non-standard varieties of
English attempting to gain access to HE. Crucial to our understanding of Tobi’s seemingly
impossible struggle to get into university is Bourdieu’s notion of capital as an index of
relative social power: The same forms and amounts of capital may result in different
positioning vis-à-vis different fields, so the forms of capital that are valued in one place
(country, institution) may not be in another. With regard to language, this suggests that there
can, therefore, be no universally valued form of linguistic competence or capital: what is
valued in the periphery may not be at the centre (though rarely vice versa). How a standard
variety of a language comes to be seen as the dominant form is not arbitrary, but has much to
do with relative power and hegemony. If, like Bourdieu, we conceptualise standard language
and literacy not as ‘things’ with intrinsic value in themselves but as having a relative value
according to a particular market in a particular place at a particular time, we can make more
sense of why, in particular places, some varieties of English (e.g. standard British) and
some types of literacy (e.g. academic, ‘essayist’ [Lillis 2001]) are more highly valued than
others. Moreover, we can understand why some students struggle much more than others
to gain recognition for their linguistic repertoires and academic qualifications–especially
 Language and Education 61

those who use non-prestige varieties of English and bear qualifications from institutions
that are not regarded as ‘elite’.
Echoing Bourdieu, Collins and Slembrouck write (2005, 191), ‘What are adequate
linguistic capabilities for one setting can be profoundly inadequate for another’. Tobi, for
example, went to university in Nigeria, on the periphery of the world system (Blommaert
2005), in sub-Saharan Africa. There, his English was never considered a ‘problem’. It
only became so when he moved to London, in Western Europe, a core global region, and
overnight became a speaker of a low prestige variety of English. The different valuing
of languages or of varieties of a language in particular fields rests on ideologies about
language. Collins and Slembrouck go on to say the following:
Language ideologies are discourses that regiment the interpretation of situated utterances, in
all of its hybrid, shifting, stylised variety. They prejudge which languages in which forms are
relevant for the tasks at hand [. . .], what categories of person speak which languages, and, upon
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using a given language, what ‘communities’ they stand for [. . .], what kinds of competencies
‘non-natives’ are likely to have and what problems they pose for a normatively monolingual
speaker [. . .]. In a word, language ideologies provide simplifying, evaluative frames for dealing
with the flux of practice. (2005, 192)
The last point made here by Collins and Slembrouck (‘simplifying evaluative frames
for dealing with the flux of practice’) is amply illustrated by the practices we examine
in the rest of this paper – we describe the testing regimes faced by multilingual students,
which fail to recognise either their heteroglossic local environments or the diversity of their
practices, and which judge them by their failure to write according to the norms of a small
culturally specific (i.e. middle-class, academic, English) elite.
In sum, both the global and local have an impact on the opportunities of migrant
students. Against this background the next section describes the college Tobi attended, the
course he was following at the time of this study and the assessment regimes to which
he was subjected. We go on to describe Tobi’s learning trajectory, exploring how certain
aspects of his experience (his country of origin, the effects of migration, the devaluing of
his linguistic repertoire and his positioning by the adult education system as ‘deficit’) have
led to a dramatic loss of cultural capital (the funds of knowledge, skills and other credentials
needed for status in society) – a loss which is compounded even by the institutions that
exist to assist him, and by the very individuals within those systems who have his welfare
at heart.

Contexts
Midbury College and the pre-access class
Tobi was enrolled in a class popularly known by students as ‘Pre-Access’ or PA class, a
name which we retain in this paper, at the main site of Midbury College, a large FE college
in London’s inner suburbs. The college enjoys a good reputation amongst local employers as
well as with the local university, Eastbrooke, with which it works in close conjunction and
to which many Midbury students apply. The area has high indices of social deprivation and
is populated by a large proportion of minority ethnic people. On the PA course all but two
of the 13 students were born abroad, and all were bi- or multilingual. Ten of the students on
the course were from West and East Africa, and some had undertaken secondary migration
(coming from African countries via other EU countries to the United Kingdom).2 The
range of languages and language varieties used by students at the college is characteristic
of contemporary urban multilingualism, and the demographic make-up of the local area
 62 J. Simpson and M. Cooke

accords with the superdiversity of many contemporary urban communities in the United
Kingdom and beyond (Vertovec 2006). That is, it reflects a proliferation of complex cultural
groupings and an interconnectedness that extends beyond established notions of diversity.
Data for this paper was originally generated during 2006 and 2007 as a part of the
project, Progress, Persist and Achieve, instigated by the Quality Improvement Agency,
run by the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) and the National
Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy (NRDC), which
involved both authors (QIA 2008). For that project we carried out lesson observations,
conducted interviews with four students in the class and with Lesley, the PA class teacher,
Jan, the head of Access courses at Midbury College and Bren, an admissions tutor at
Eastbrooke, the local university. For this paper we draw on these interviews, and also on
documentary data we collected: the literacy test for the Access course; the literacy test for
admission to Eastbrooke; schemes of work for the PA course and project field notes.
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The PA course is co-ordinated by Lesley and was designed, in collaboration with the
Access course teachers, for people who originally applied for a place on an Access course
(for example, Access to Social Care, Access to Business), but whose literacy and numeracy
skills were judged on application to fall short of the required level. Students have lessons in
English, maths, study skills and IT, which make up the bulk of the timetable, but there are
also options taught by staff from other departments (e.g. sociology, psychology, business
studies and science). This broad curriculum was designed so that students with different
aspirations for HE could, at this stage, be taught together. A major preoccupation of the
teachers, and indeed the foremost purpose of the course, is for students to improve their
written academic English so that they can get through the entry tests for the Access courses.
The chief focus for improvement is generic essay writing: Students go through a regular
cycle of reading model essays, identifying parts of their structure (introduction, middle
and conclusion), discussing how to write ‘clearly’ and ‘coherently’ and drafting and re-
drafting their own essays. On Tobi’s course, tutors also paid a lot of attention to accuracy
in grammar (e.g. subject/verb agreement), spelling and punctuation, in a sustained attempt
to orient students towards a normative standard variety of academic English with a focus
on these surface features. Some students, among them Tobi, made little progress in this
respect, to their and teacher’s frustration.
Despite its title, not all students achieve their goal of getting onto an Access course upon
completion of a PA course; of 15 students on the PA course the previous year, only four
moved onto the Access course, the original ambition of all the students. Most experienced
a sideway or downward movement through the qualification framework, in many cases to
ESOL (see Simpson, Cooke, and Baynham 2008), to vocational courses or to a ‘pre-GCSE’
course. This points to the fact that the stratification of FE and HE begins a good while before
students even apply to university. Interviews with the course organisers show that early on
there is a ‘sorting’ stage during which students are sometimes invited to re-evaluate their
goals and aspirations. This might entail a change of direction to something ‘more realistic’
than university. In effect, students are encouraged to join the local job market sooner rather
than later.
Such encouragement is proffered in formal and informal (but always asymmetri-
cal) advice-giving interactions – ‘gatekeeping encounters’ (Erickson and Shultz 1982;
Roberts and Sarangi 1999) – which take place between tutors or advice and guidance
staff on the one hand and students on the other, along with more formal admission inter-
views. Talk-in-interaction in academic and other institutional settings can have powerful
gatekeeping functions. Such encounters are not neutral, as emphasised by Erickson and
Shultz:
 Language and Education 63

On the contrary, our analysis suggests that the game is raised, albeit not deliberately, in favour
of those individuals whose communication style and social background are most similar to
those of the interviewer with whom they talk. One result is that in gatekeeping encounters
the ‘gates’ of encouragement and special help are opened wider for some individuals than for
others. (1982, 193)

Tobi tells us that the advice he receives is influential, not to say directive (‘they told
me I am not quite ready for that’), and serves to point or deflect students in certain
directions. The informal advice given to students on a PA course by their tutor provides
an illustration of this. Based on her assessment of the students’ ability and the relative
difficulty of aspects of the course they wish to progress onto, Lesley advises students not to
follow particular routes through their learning. For example, rather than an Access course
she might recommend they follow a vocational course:
What I’m saying to these couple of students is you’re not quite ready yet um but I would like
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you to consider doing a childcare course now our childcare course is NVQs [vocational] and
things I shouldn’t really be saying this but they are not so picky on the Maths and the English.

She makes reference to certain courses and routes being more ‘realistic’ for some
students, because the maths and English on the course is not so challenging, or because
they will take less time, and so will enable students to move out of education and into
employment more quickly. This is something that Lesley is in fact expected to do by
the tutors on Access courses, who themselves are judged on the quality of students they
produce for HE. Lesley, aware that her students might be rejected by the higher-level
courses they aspire to, is often in the invidious position of having to advise them against
their preferred routes. At the same time, but on a different scale, this resonates with the
‘Skills for Employability’ agenda promoted by the UK Government, and calls to mind the
old division between ‘academic’ and ‘vocational’ in the English education system.
Perhaps inevitably, the PA course is negatively positioned within the complex college
hierarchy in which similar-seeming courses are valued very differently by both students and
teachers. PA students and their teacher are aware of this; dealing with the disappointment
of students who have been ‘rejected’ from more prestigious courses, such as the Access, is
one of the challenges of Lesley’s job, as she explains here:
So what I do is to make them feel more comfortable about being rejected, yes. They do the
maths and English but they also do their chosen subject as an option, so if you were a student
and you were rejected from Business Studies I make sure you’ve got an option of doing business
studies with me. The same with nursing, only with nursing it’s going to be science because
that’s what nurses need . . . sociology and psychology for again nurses and anybody else and
social work because I get a lot of social workers turned down.

Helping people to be more realistic about their prospects is a delicate balance for
teachers who also wish to foster the aspirations of their students, and one which Lesley
clearly struggles with. She often finds herself acting as an advocate for her students, who are
believed by her colleagues in other departments not to be equal to the rigours of academic
study. Lesley is also sensitive to the day-to-day realities of the lives of some of her students,
who juggle their studies with low-paid jobs, childcare and other responsibilities. Despite
their initial disappointment, many students thrive on the PA course and benefit from the
extra time they have been given to develop academically. However, this is not the case for
all, and the reputation of the PA course as of low status is obvious and painful to some of
the students, as our student, Tobi, makes clear.
In addition to the essay writing tuition and assessments undertaken on the PA course,
teachers also prepare students for the assessments of literacy, which they encounter on their
 64 J. Simpson and M. Cooke

routes through the framework of levels and qualifications at the college and beyond. In
the following section we discuss the influence these literacy tests have on this movement,
before turning to Tobi’s trajectory itself.

Literacy tests as academic progression practices

Complex stratification processes in FE and HE include a sorting and stratifying role in
courses at all levels as people learn to be ‘realistic’ about their progression. This section
examines the role of particular text-based progression practices that can operate as tangible
‘mechanisms of social closure’ (Reay et al. 2001, 855): the various tests encountered
by students on their progression trajectories. These tests are gatekeeping devices, which,
usually unwittingly, combine to reproduce the inequalities of access to HE for students like
Tobi. In addition to the exams and their resultant paper qualifications required for university
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entry (A Level pass at particular grades, or a certain number of credits on an Access course;
institutional capital, in Bourdieu’s terms), there are other less formal, locally generated
text-based progression practices that students meet on their routes through learning. The
tests we consider here are the college-devised literacy test for entry onto Access courses
at Midbury; and the literacy entry test for certain degree courses that must be taken by
prospective students at the University of Eastbrooke (among them, many students from
Midbury).
Students like Tobi frequently find the entry test for Access courses an insurmountable
barrier. The admissions tutor for the college’s Access courses states that ‘second language’
students, or ‘people who haven’t got literacy skills’ are the ones who are most likely to
be ‘referred elsewhere’ because they have failed this test. The literacy component of the
Access entry test is a free-writing exercise, assessed according to a checklist of ‘essential’
and ‘desirable’ criteria. Students have 30 minutes to write a discursive or argument-focused
essay (of at least one side of A4 or four ‘substantial’ paragraphs) on a topic such as ‘Do you
think the congestion charge should be abolished?’; ‘If you were Prime Minister for the day,
what would you change and why?’ Leaving aside the quality of the questions and the level
of prior knowledge assumed of test-takers, the criteria for marking the essays rests heavily
on an ability to produce standard English that is accurate in terms of its surface features.
The ‘essential’ criteria for passing the essay test read as follow:

r Is spelling generally accurate and any errors do not impede understanding?

r Are sentences varied in length and structure?
r Is the use of capital letters and commas mostly correct?
r Do verbs mostly agree with subjects?
r Is there a good range of vocabulary?
r Does the writing progress in a clear way with mostly consistent use of tense?

These criteria force assessors to make some difficult judgements. For instance, the
first comprises two criteria in one, and assessors will have to decide whether both have
been achieved. Other criteria oblige markers to judge the extent of ‘mostly’. And overall,
the criteria focus on features such as capitalisation, punctuation and spelling in standard
English, to the exclusion of content, meaning and textual structure.
At the University of Eastbrooke, there are locally designed and piloted literacy and
numeracy entry tests for some degree courses. The literacy test is a 20-item multiple
choice test; each question has one correct answer and three distractors. Of the 20 questions,
seven test spelling, five test punctuation, two test subject/verb agreement and one each
 Language and Education 65

tests verb forms and pronouns. Only four items test reading skills that require some depth
of processing: global comprehension and making inferences. Again, this literacy test is
rooted in a conception of academic literacy where the focus is almost exclusively on the
surface features of the text. The test and the process of its design also raise questions of
its appropriacy for users of non-standard varieties of English. Bren, the admissions tutor
at Eastbrooke who administers the test, was asked whether its design caters in any way for
multilingual students:
I: Was there any [...] reference or acknowledgement of or attempt to address speakers of second
languages in this literacy test?

B: Um (.) it was part of the discussions erm (.) and centred around time (.) but er in talking
with the student union and student services it it the emphasis came down on the eurocentricity
of the curriculum that we were wanting them to practise in England we weren’t teaching them
to practise abroad.
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The important role of these locally originated tests for gaining entry onto the Access
course in FE or a degree or diploma course in HE leads us to consider whether the tests
themselves contribute to students’ inability to progress in academic life. It could be that
those most likely to pass these tests are the ones who familiar with a focus on accuracy
in standard English. Given that concerns with accuracy are a feature of the UK education
system, perhaps those who have undergone schooling in that system are most likely to
succeed in such tests (although many of the British-born and educated students in Preece’s
study [in this volume] also experienced difficulties in passing such tests). We see later that
Tobi views the Nigerian education system as having a greater focus on meaning and less
on surface accuracy than the system he encounters in the United Kingdom. Whether he is
right or wrong, there is little doubt that conformity to standard English is highly valued in
academic and lay contexts in the United Kingdom, even among those who do not consider
themselves proficient in its intricacies (evident in the success of the ‘Gremlins’ literacy
campaign and of bestsellers in the popular literacy book market such as Truss’s [2003] Eats
Shoots and Leaves). In their gatekeeping role, the tests in question are local enactments of
broad and pervasive power differentials, which (almost certainly unintentionally) index a
concern of a higher scale, of an ideology that privileges competent users of standard British
English above users of other varieties of English.
Later in the paper we discuss the ‘study skills’ orientation of Tobi’s literacy learning
and testing in relation to other models of academic literacy, which might point towards a
more useful direction for his teachers and testers. Before that, in the following sections we
sketch out Tobi’s trajectory through the academic system. In doing so, we turn again to the
downward mobility he experiences as a corollary of this movement.

Tobi’s story
Tobi was 22 years old at the time of our study and had been living with his mother and
younger brother in London since coming to the United Kingdom in 2004. When Tobi
was very young, his lawyer father left the family and his mother migrated to the United
Kingdom, leaving Tobi to be raised by his grandmother and aunts. His two brothers came
to the United Kingdom in 1998; he arrived six years later, as he says, ‘I have to come to
London because all my family is there’. Tobi’s ambition is to study law. Before leaving
Nigeria he had embarked on a law degree course and completed the first term.
Drawing on Bernstein’s notion of vertical and horizontal discourses (Bernstein 1996;
see also Baynham and Simpson forthcoming) we can consider Tobi’s academic progress as a
 66 J. Simpson and M. Cooke

‘vertical trajectory’ through the qualifications framework. Akin to other discourses around
emblems of socio-economic status, the language of academic achievement is frequently
couched in terms of upward movement. Hence, as with housing and careers, progression in
education from one qualification aim to the next is often described as an upward movement
through abstract space, on a framework or a ladder. Institutional discourse surrounding
learning and progress is saturated with the metaphorical language of vertical movement
upwards through levels (Lakoff and Johnson 2003). Yet, in Tobi’s case, instead of the
hoped-for upward trajectory (moving up a level), Tobi’s movement is downwards (moving
down).
Upon arrival in the United Kingdom, he attempted to apply directly for a law degree,
having started one in Nigeria. Finding his lack of UK qualifications that prevented this,
he enrolled on an A Level course at Midbury College. After performing badly on the A
Level course entrance test, he was advised to start with AS Level law, English, politics and
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sociology. During his AS year he was withdrawn from two subjects (‘the tutor just told me
that I can’t cope, that I have to go’) and eventually took two AS Levels, gaining low grades
in politics and sociology. Unable to progress further along the A Level route, he attempted
to enrol on an Access to law course at the college, but failed the literacy test (‘they just told
me my English was not great enough for me to go on to Access to law that I wanted to do.
The only advice that she can give me for me to do to come and do Pre-Access’). Thus, he
found himself on the PA course, which, as described above, is positioned institutionally as
being for people who have been ‘rejected’ from other ‘higher’ courses, particularly Access
courses. The next stage of his downward journey through the qualification system will come
in the next academic year: currently on the PA course, Lesley has advised him to progress
from there to a ‘pre-GCSE’ course, which is meant for those who are deemed to improve
their English and maths before embarking on a GCSE course. Tobi was interviewed towards
the bottom of his journey through the qualification system, at the point when he was in fact
on the verge of giving up. This exchange comes at the end of his interview:

T: No I’m not working now but I’m looking for work.

I: Oh you’re looking for work what are you looking for.
T: Just general.
I: Just to get some money.
T: Yes.
I: OK so you’re not looking for a career kind of job.
T: No, because I haven’t got any qualifications.

Tobi’s experience of a downward vertical trajectory can be better understood when

viewed through the lens of social class. As we have pointed out earlier, and as Collins
(2006) notes, although social class is an important aspect of immigration and is invoked in
accounting for differences in educational attainment in local-born populations, it is largely
neglected in studies of immigrant language learning and education. Collins maintains that
in such studies, ‘social class is the “category that dare not speak its name”. Like other
displaced and repressed formations, it is known indirectly through its effects’ (2006, 3).
Class, conceptualised as a process rather than a structural given, accounts for Tobi’s failure
to progress in academic life by encompassing the dynamic nature of multilingual diversity,
migration and, in Tobi’s case, transnational identity. Within a dynamic account of class
processes, a key concept is that of declassing: the downward mobility experienced by many
during the migration process, which might also be described as a loss of capital (economic,
social, cultural) in Bourdieu’s terms. In a dynamic account of class, categories such as
 Language and Education 67

occupation, education and employment status are effects of class, and in Tobi’s case, of
declassing: From his status as a university student in Nigeria, he has moved ‘downwards’
to being a ‘basic skills’ student at an FE college in London.
Concomitant with Tobi’s downward movement is his lack of agency. This is a reflection
of his, and his mother’s, corresponding lack of social capital (Bourdieu 1986), that is, their
knowledge about the workings of the educational system in the United Kingdom and of
networks they can draw on for advice. Tobi’s downward trajectory began upon his arrival in
the United Kingdom, when he was not allowed to apply directly for a law degree, a process
which he describes as one in which he had no agency. Equally, his attempt to join the A
Level course is met with resistance from the gatekeepers at the college, which also raises
the issue of comparability of qualifications internationally: ‘Yes they look at my Nigerian
qualifications and they see that I have good results but at the same time they have to test
me for assessment’. A Levels inevitably figure large for those aspiring to university, as
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something you have to do if you want to get a place; Tobi and his mother were both aware
of this when Tobi first moved to London. Tobi’s mother ‘asked for advice and they told her
that for me to go to university I must do my A Levels, it’s compulsory’, and previously his
mother had appropriated the idea that that A Levels are a necessary must, again highlighting
Tobi’s lack of agency in this process:
My mum told me that this is the normal way they do this in England, that anyone that wants to
go to university and gets GCSE results that you must do A Levels before you are able to go, so
that was the only thing that I went on, my mother, well, I don’t have a choice, I have to do A
Level.

Tobi and standard English

Tobi’s view of the PA course is deeply contradictory. He feels strongly that he is misplaced
on the course (‘every time I think about this course I believe I am not supposed to be here’),
maintaining that he should by now be at least on the Access to law course. Equally, however,
he does feel that the PA course will help him with his English. Here we can discern a second
type of progression, again following Bernstein (1996), and comparing with Baynham and
Simpson’s (forthcoming) horizontal progression. A horizontal trajectory maps student’s
achievement not just through vertical movement through a framework but also through
attainment that cannot be quantified in exam passes. Some students might articulate this
type of progression in terms of things they can do now that they were unable to do previously.
Tobi feels that ‘English was my only problem’, and justifies to himself his presence on the
PA course by appeal to the realisation that his English is improving by dint of this:
By now I have the feeling in my head that it’s due to my English so I don’t have a choice, I
have to do it, which is helping me, so I believe this course is helping me.

So, while the course is helping him with his English (horizontal progression) he is no
closer to the law degree course at which he aims (vertical progression). Why, though, does
he now view his English as the major barrier to his progression? To answer this, we first
note that aspects of Tobi’s language use crystallised into sharp relief when he moved to the
United Kingdom. At the outset he found that his own variety of English differed greatly
from that which he encountered in his new home. It seems that he had expected people in
England to speak in the same way as he did:
I: Did you expect this before you came? Did you think, oh when I get to England my English
is not going to be good enough?
 68 J. Simpson and M. Cooke

T: No I don’t I thought everything was just going to be like(.) I thought English that will speak
like English I speak here

Secondly, as suggested by the interviewer’s question in the above-given extract, he found

that his variety of English is not as highly valued in England as it was in Nigeria. Tobi
considers his variety of Nigerian English to be his second language, and it was his language
of schooling. Blommaert notes the relative valuing of English acquired in Africa, the loss
of linguistic capital as part of the declassing process associated with migration (2005 72):
The English acquired by urban Africans may offer them considerable prestige and access to
middle-class identities in African towns. It may be an ‘expensive’, extremely valuable resource
to them. But the same English, when spoken in London by the same Africans, may become an
object of stigmatisation and may qualify them as members of the lower strata of society. What
is very ‘expensive’ in Lusaka or Nairobi may be very ‘cheap’ in London or New York.
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The way his tutors discuss with Tobi the difference between his variety of English and
standard English suggests that they subscribe to a particular set of beliefs about language in
academic discourse that position Tobi’s variety of English as peripheral and non-privileged,
and standard British English as central and privileged. At the root of this ideology is the
notion that Tobi’s English is poor in relation to the standard variety that has high status in
academic discourse in the global core. Moreover, he needs to learn the standard variety of
academic English if he is to progress in education. As he says:
. . . all my lecturers always taught me that Tobi you know what you understand every bit of the
subject even you are ahead with the tests in the class but the only problem you have is your
English it is very very poor.
His tutors regard the features of Tobi’s English requiring attention to be tenses, spelling
and punctuation, and attend mainly to accuracy and form when giving feedback on written
work (‘we always get some feedback from them they are quite harsh about English too’).
Having identified such features as Tobi’s main barrier to progression, the tutors adopt a
‘study skills’ orientation to their literacy teaching (see below).
In time Tobi himself has come to believe that his English is sub-standard (‘I finally
realised my English was poor’), and is preventing him from progressing. Because his tutors
constantly draw attention to his language use at the micro level, he too starts focusing on
spelling, grammar and tenses. In this extract he indicates that he now knows he makes
mistakes when previously he was unaware that he did, and that he is improving:
I do make some error when I’m speaking English sometimes but I don’t know about now but
before I do make some errors and my English in my essays in my writing a letter I feel I have
some mistakes(.) I still do mistakes but I think it’s quite better than before.
Like his tutors, he begins to view the study skills approach of the PA course to be
the answer to his perceived problem of inaccurate English, ‘because then I was seeing my
errors myself all my English I was saying to myself that I need help with this thing’.
This focus on accuracy stands in sharp contrast with his previous experience of learn-
ing and using English at school in Nigeria. The lack of attention to error correction when
he was at school leads Tobi to consider that his Nigerian English is something of a di-
minished variety, and one which he was not taught carefully. In Nigeria, the teachers did
not concentrate on accuracy in the same way the teachers do in the United Kingdom, he
says, and attributes the difference both to the fact that English is a ‘second language’ in
Nigeria and that the teachers have more of a concern with the content of the subjects being
taught:
 Language and Education 69

Just simply because English is a second language so all those teachers are not really deep, the
only thing that they know is once they understand what you’re doing the subject you are doing.
I think that’s the only thing that they’re concerned about not your English.

Whether this is actually the case or not, it is Tobi’s perception that the concern in
Nigeria was on meaning-making, in contrast to Midbury, where more attention is given
to the surface accuracy. While Tobi is probably aware that his variety of English is one
that in Blommaert’s (2005) terms does not ‘travel well’ (that is, it loses value on its
journey from sub-Saharan Africa to the English-dominant West), he does not know why.
He is obliged, therefore, to align himself with his tutors’ way of approaching his academic
literacy. Gradually, Tobi’s acceptance grows that his difficulty with the surface features of
English is at the root of his problems, although having to concentrate on his mistakes is
time-consuming and a hindrance to his progress. However, he uses this perception to justify
to himself his enrolment onto the PA course: He needs to learn the detail of the standard
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variety of English that is privileged in academic discourse, to gain access to this variety,
and the PA course will help him achieve this.
The PA course has been presented to Tobi as an opportunity for progression onto the
Access course. In addition, since coming to the college, he has been constantly labelled as
someone whose English is poor, to the extent that he now describes himself in such terms.
Perplexed upon arrival, he has soon come to accept his struggles with the surface features
of standard English as his problem, and the PA course as his current solution. However,
there may be factors lying behind barriers to his progression that Tobi’s teachers do not
address. His use of English can be viewed as problematic and full of errors, but another
interpretation could view these ‘errors’ as features of his non-standard variety of English.
Moreover, it might be worthwhile exploring with him the histories, linguistic ideologies and
power relations which lead to his variety being regarded as marginal in relation to standard
British English. A further area of study, though, which seems to be essential for Tobi and
all other non-traditional students, is that of the nature of academic literacy. This needs to
be approached both from the point of view of genre, structure and the particular features
of writing required in different academic disciplines and institutions (such as nursing, or
law), and of the more complex, often hidden features of academic literacy that lie beyond
the surface level, such as the elusive issues of stance, reflexivity and academic ‘voice. We
expand on these issues below, in the final section of this paper.

Academic literacies
The issues raised by Tobi’s story beg questions about the learning and teaching of academic
literacy: questions that are pertinent for classroom practice, for teacher training, and for the
tertiary education sector as a whole. Lea and Street (1998) propose three models of student
writing in HE. First, a study skills model, regarding the student as deficit and fixable, with
a focus on surface language, spelling, grammar and punctuation. Second, an academic
socialisation model, involving the acculturation of students into academic discourse and
inducting students into a new academic culture. Third, an academic literacies model,
involving students’ negotiation of conflicting literacy practices and an engagement with
literacy at a deep level of identity and epistemiology. Tobi’s tutors at Midbury view the
solution to his literacy difficulties as lying within the first of these models, that is, Tobi
needs some kind of study support in which he will be able to address his deficits and
concentrate on the accuracy that they consider need attention. A more effective response
 70 J. Simpson and M. Cooke

to Tobi’s situation might involve a combination of the second and third models, subsuming
the first.
In his early days at the college as an A Level student Tobi reports that one tutor gave
him feedback for an essay: ‘There were so many mistakes and [the tutor] told me, no I can’t
do it and I have to go to AS and with the AS I have to go through some learning support and
all these kinds of things’. While it is true that if Tobi is to pass the literacy tests at Midbury
and later Eastbrooke, he needs to address matters of surface accuracy, his difficulties with
academic writing go deeper than those which can be tackled by the study skills model.
What he lacks is a knowledge of how all kinds of texts work, the generic features which
belong to particular texts in particular domains and the literacy practices which are required
in specific disciplines (in Tobi’s case, law). Such knowledge is not easily acquired, even on
teacher education courses (though see Hyland 2002; Swales and Feak 2000). But without
a knowledge of how to analyse academic discourse, teachers will be unable to address the
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issues Tobi has at a textual level, and appropriate to the discipline he hopes to enter.
Beyond attention to the text, the tradition of language socialisation considers language
not as a formal code but as a semiotic resource for ‘invoking social and moral sentiments,
collective and personal identities tied to place and situation, and bodies of knowledge
and belief ’ (Ochs and Schieffelin 2008, 8). Language socialisation is concerned with how
novices are socialised to be competent members in the target culture through language
use, and how they are socialised to use language (Schieffelin and Ochs 1986). For Tobi,
adopting an academic socialisation model for his studies would involve him and his teachers
considering the broad range of social, cultural and linguistic practices associated with the
study of law. Although the socialisation model has been critiqued as being merely a model
of uncritical acculturation (Lea and Street 1998), it does encompass a step, which, for Tobi,
may well be an essential one. As long as he focuses only on surface features of accuracy or
generic essays, he is unlikely to work out for himself what the more complex features and
practices of academic and discipline-specific literacies are. Again, this presents a challenge
to his teachers, and to teacher education for FE teaching.
Lea and Street’s (1998) academic literacies model has an underlying assumption that
literacies are social practices, and involves attention to matters of identity in writing, and of
bringing ideology out into the open. Recent work by Street (forthcoming) maintains that an
academic literacies model of student writing can attend to ‘the more hidden features that are
called upon in judgements of academic writing that often remain implicit’. These ‘hidden
features’ include academic voice (Street quotes Ivanič: ‘Who am I as I write this book?’
[1998, 1]), and stance (agency and reflexivity). This is in addition to matters such as framing
(appropriate for the genre and the audience), signalling or signposting and the addressing
of the ‘so what’ question: the contribution of the writing to the field and to knowledge.
With regard to ideology, in an academic literacies model, Tobi would explore critically
his own language use, the transnational and hybrid nature of language use that surrounds
him and the reasons why his own variety of written English is viewed as diminished and
problematic. Tobi’s tutors do not currently seem well equipped to address the ideological
foundations of standard English, the complexities of his own language use or the ‘hidden’
features of academic writing. Yet, again this implies encompassing such matters within
teacher education.

Conclusion
Loss of linguistic capital is an aspect of the declassing that Tobi encounters during his
migration process. As a user of a language variety which does not ‘travel well’, he finds
 Language and Education 71

he does not have access to HE. His physical movement to the United Kingdom entails a
loss of capital of all kinds, not only linguistic, rendering him vulnerable to the downward
vertical trajectory through the qualifications framework that he describes. With widening
participation, a seemingly inclusive policy, has come an increase in the efforts made by FE
and HE institutions to address the language and literacy issues presented by non-traditional
students. The thrust of these efforts, however, rests at the level of ‘study skills’. It is unlikely
that such work alone will solve Tobi’s current and future difficulties.
It is notable that language (rather than socio-economic status, cultural difference and
distance from the privileged core, or even forms of discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity
or gender) is used as a reason for Tobi to progress beyond a ‘basic skills’ course in the United
Kingdom. Other issues are ripe for discussion: The use of language as a proxy for race;
the institutionalised anglocentricity of FE and HE; the inability and unwillingness of UK-
based academics to address the inaccessibility of academic discourse for non-traditional
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would-be HE students and the refusal to regard linguistic diversity as a resource, not a
problem. A first step, perhaps, is to bring into play the ideological dimension of Lea and
Street’s (1998) model of academic literacies. This would require those charged with helping
Tobi and students like him gain access to HE to make clear the beliefs that lie behind the
labelling, the test designs and the common-sense discourse that combine to create barriers
to access.
The greater challenge is to recognise and address the wider inequalities that permeate
the lives of students like Tobi. Carrington and Luke (1997, 10) list ‘larger issues of the
distribution of the students’ social, economic and symbolic capital’ that:
. . . may require a much broader set of pedagogical challenges: The challenges of convincing
employers, politicians and the public of the persistent need for the equitable distribution of
resources, non-discriminatory access and fairness in the social institutions of work, government
and community life. Such a project would need to be part of a broader ‘public pedagogy’ (C.
Luke, 1996) incumbent on us all, one that entails a systematic effort to address literacy myths
and to re-educate community interest groups, politicians, public sector agencies, business and
corporate sector employers about the powers and limits of literacy in generating economic,
social and cultural change.

In the meantime Tobi presents a challenge to those with an interest in the reproduction
and maintenance of the status quo. He himself is compliant, as is everyone he encounters in
his academic trajectory, in the (mis)recognition – Bourdieu’s meconnaissance (2000) – of the
legitimacy of the standard (variety of) language; and this ‘contributes towards reproducing
existing power relations’ (Bourdieu 1977, 30). This, of course, is hardly surprising: Tobi,
after his discussions with his tutors about accuracy and his poor English now firmly believes
that he needs to gain access to a particular – dominant – variety of English if he is to fulfil
his ambition of going to university. And he is right, even though he lives in an age of mass
migration and transnational movements of people, and even as the milieu within which
both Midbury College and the University of Eastbrooke are situated, and the student base
upon which they draw, become increasingly diverse.

Notes
1. The names of all persons and institutions in this paper have been anonymised.
2. The countries were Ethiopia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Somalia. Of these, two had lived previously in
Germany and Holland. One student was Portuguese, of African heritage and two were UK born,
of Caribbean background.
 72 J. Simpson and M. Cooke

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