Case Studies

Farzana

Farzana was born in Iran and came to the UK with her husband in 2006.  The couple live in Brent and have since had two children who attend one of the local primary schools.

Farzana has not had much opportunity to improve her English previously due to childcare responsibilities and a period of ill health.  Her children speak English and would translate for her, but she wanted to learn more English herself so she could help with their homework and look for part-time work.

Farzana signed up at the College of North West London in September 2016 for a pre-ESOL course funded by European Social Fund project – ‘Basic English Language for the Unemployed’.  The project helps individuals such as Farzana gain the language and employability skills they need to go into further learning, apply for jobs to enable them to enter sustainable employment.

Farzana’s course lasted for 16 weeks in which time she learnt basic English, life-skills and all-important employability skills. 

When asked how the course has helped her, Farzana said that she now feels more confident using simple English phrases and doing everyday things such as making appointments at her GP surgery. “I can also go to the library with the children to read with them and access computers.” she says.

Since completing the course in January 2017, Farzana has taken classes in basic computing and is now planning to continue learning English with an Entry Level 1 ESOL course starting in January 2018.

Nagpal

Nagpal was referred to Promise Training Centre in July 17 from Hayes Jobcentre; he is from Afghanistan and was very keen to improve his English skills and confidence to be able to seek employment. 

During classes Nagpal was always the 1^st person to ask questions and challenge things from other learners and the teaching he constantly wanted to know more and to ensure that he was saying things correctly.  He was keen to be stretched and challenged and would ask for more work to do at home, he was focused and his main goal as well as improving his language skills was to gain employment to better his life in this country

We focused a lot on employability skills and how to conduct himself in a interview, in the beginning Nagpal was not very confident in presenting his skills and strengths, but as each lesson went on he grew more confident and towards the end he was able to do an interview with little support in front of the class

Nagpal made a lot of progress, his sentence structuring was better, he could explain himself well and was able to complete an application form with the basic information and also his skills, he learnt new vocabulary and he was able to identify his strengths and experince

Napal completed the course in October and is now working as a shop assistant in a toy shop..