Group assignment on the English-speaking world

The last couple of weeks, my first year students have worked on a group assignment on various countries in the English-speaking world. I split the class into six groups, and each group was asked to prepare a presentation on an English-speaking country. For this project I also challenged the students' creative sides. I am just feed up with boring power point presentations, and therefore asked them if they could come up with something more creative. All in all I am quite happy with the results. A couple of groups had prepared role plays, two groups had made films, and the others tried to include creative elements in their, well, PP presentations. I must say that my favorite as far as creativity is concerned, was the group who had made their whole presentation into a "Who wants to be a millionaire"-show. The content of their presentation could have been better, but I was nevertheless happy to see that some of the pupils really stepped up and showed their talents as actors/actresses!

As far as assessment is concerned, I asked all the groups to hand in suggestions for assessment criteria, and I used these criteria when making this rubric for assessing the presentations. In addittion, I asked the students to assess themselves afterwards. They needed to say something about how the group had cooperated, how they themselves had contributed in the process, and also what they had learned from the presentations of the other groups. Here are some of the comments from the students:

• The assingment was actually very nice. It was fun to have the opportunity to be creative.
• I actually learned a lot about the English-speaking world from the presentations of the other groups, it was fun to watch, and I liked that it was a different learning method then we usually use. Eventhough I feel that I am going to forget a lot. This is not the way facts get stuck in my brain.
• I think it was fun to do something different in our class. I think it’s good to use different kind of ways to learn English.
• The assignment was interesting, but hard.
• I enjoyed the assignment very much actually. I'm very interested in geography, and countries, so this project suited me perfect. Although I would have preferred a different country, like Jamaica or South Africa. The reason to this is probably my interests would have suited better to these countries. Like the World Cup in football (South Africa) or Bob Marley’s life and career. But it was interesting learning about Canada too.
• From the other groups alltogether, I learned that English is a very common language. The presentations taught me that whereever I am, there is always someone who knows the English language, and that's why it's so important to learn English at school.

I may as well admit that not all the students were just happy about the project. Some were not happy about the country they had been assigned, others complained about groups that did not work. In other words, the usual stuff... My overall impression is nevertheless that they liked the creative part of the project, and that they had some fun working on their presentations. Time will show how much of the material they will actually remember though...

Teaching Roald Dahl's "Lamb to the Slaughter"

I like to use a lot of oral activities when starting up a new class. There are, at least, two reasons for this. First, I believe it is absolutely necessary for the students to start speaking in class as soon as possible, or else they will remain silent throughout the year. Second, it is important that the students learn to know each other well in order to cooperate in class.

In addition to the oral activities, I usually start a new school year by reading one of more short stories that I know, or hope, the students will like. This year I decided to read Roald Dahl's "Lamb to the Slaughter" with my first year students. Most students are familiar with Dahl's stories for children, like Mathilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. His short stories, however, are not all that well known.

I prepared both pre-reading questions and some questions that were to be answered as we read the story. I believe in close reading, but I also think it is necessary to give the students some questions to help them along. Most of the students could contribute in the discussion that followed the reading of this story; maybe one of the reasons was that quite a few had already read the story. I nevertheless think that this story has quite a lot to tell, both about the relationship between the sexes at the time the story was written, and about how you need to read between the lines in order to catch the author's message.

When searching the internet for material to use in class when working on this story, I came across a film version of the short story on YouTube. I guess the film can also be used in class in order to make the story more alive.

Hello! Is there anybody out there?

No, I am not going to write anything about Pink Floyd music (although many of their lyrics might be used in class), but I hope there is someone out there who might be interested in cooperating with me and my students. The thing is, I started up with a new group of students today, and one of the first tasks I gave them was to come up with suggestions on how they were to improve their English skills. I do believe all the "creme de la creme" students have come to my English class this year! They had a lot of interesting ideas on how to work with English, and I am happy to see that they share many of my ideas, too. Blogging was suggested (jippi!!), and I have therefore put out a survey for them to see how many would like to start blogging in English. An other idea I found interesting was getting in contact with students elsewhere, either native English speakers, or EFL learners, who could be our online pen pals. Therefore, I ask, "Is there anybody out there?" Are there any teachers out there who would like to cooperate? Please, leave me a comment or send me an e-mail if your students would like to get in touch with mine, and then we will see what we can work out.


Picture: "Atlas,it's time for your bath"

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

I have received an e-mail from a lady asking me about my experiences when it comes to teaching Mark Haddon's novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and rather than sharing my experiences with just one person, I will post it here for more people to read.

I have read this novel two times with my first year students. I am sure there are various ways of teaching a novel, but when it comes to this particular novel, I have asked the students to do most of the reading at home. I ususally give them some time in class in the beginning, though, just to make sure they all get started. As they read along, I have asked them to fill in information about plot, themes and characters in a table like this:

One of the advantages of taking notes like these, is that the students are forced to make up their own minds about certain central points in a literary text, and they also need to dig deeper into the text in order to find relevant paragraphs and chapters to illustrate their points of view.

When all the students have finished reading the novel, I have set aside time for group discussions on the text. I usually split the classes into groups of 5-6 so that they will all have to participate. The students' performance in these discussions is assessed. The kind of questions I ask, and how many questions I have to ask each group depend on how talkative the students are, but I usually find that most 16 year olds have quite a lot of things to say about Christopher's story so that I do not have to go through a long list of questions.

All in all, I like using this novel with my classes. Most students find the text quite easy to read, and they can also see that Christopher is different, but not all that different from themselves. I guess it is a good idea that we all see the world through someone else's eyes at times, and I am sure I will read this novel with more students in the future.

I have also written about the novel in these blog posts:

• The Curious Incident, part one
• Term papers, grammar, multiculturalism and a dog

Native Americans

One of the benefits of this blog, is that I can go back and find lesson plans I have made earlier and use them all over again. I can also read about the things that worked and the things that did not work in class so that I can make changes and adjustments. With a busy week ahead, it is nice to find plans that I have used and that I remember worked quite well in class. Last year I read W.P.Kinsella's short story "Panache" with my students, and I plan to use the same story tomorrow. I find that one of the challenges teaching literature is to make the students dig into the literary text, to read between the lines and also try to come up with their own reflections on the text. Last year I therefore made this list of activities to the story that were meant to force the students to be active participators that had to think and not just recite what others had already said. Hopefully these activities will work with my students this year as well.

Learning about the Native Americans simply by reading literature is not enough, however. As a point of departure I have therefore planned for us to use a couple of factual texts from the NDLA pages, one text dealing with the present day situation of the Indians, and another focusing on the Trial of Tears. I am really happy with most of the resources on the NDLA pages and find them to be of great help when planning a new topic, so I just want to say thanks to all those who have contributed with material!

Picture:'aniishnabek' from FlickrCC

Checks and balances - more resources

I just came across this lesson plan about the US system of government. For me it is too late, and also a bit too detailed, to use it all, but I liked the flow chart and plan to use it in class. The internet is great; there is no end to all the useful material I find there!

Regionalism, federalism, checks and balances

I have spent this morning planning tomorrow’s teaching, and as the title here suggests, our main focus in class will be on the USA. Ususally, the students come to class with a lot on their minds when we are dealing with the US, but my experience is that their knowledge about American politics and geography is not the best. This should not come as a surprise, but I believe most many teachers tend to forget that we have been just as ignorant at some point in life as our students are when we meet them in the classroom. I also believe we sometimes forget that one of the reasons we know quite a lot about certain topics, is because we have been interested in learning about them, not only because we were told to. I know for sure I was not all that into American politics either when I was 16.

Anyway, last week I gave all my students a small group assignment on regions in the US. My aim is for them all to know that the USA consists of 50 individual states (if someone can explain to me why so many Norwegians think there are 52 states, I would be happy to know, by the way…), and that there is a great variety from one region to the other when it comes to history, economy, attitudes, etc. As a point of departure, all the students were asked to read the text “America the beautiful”. Then each of the groups were given one specific region they were to present to the others. In the presentations I want all the groups to include information about

history

population

economy, business and industry

geography

famous cities and attractions

and I really hope they have managed to dig up information about all the five points, not just the last one.

After all the presentations, we will turn to politics. I have tried to find some resources on the internet that can help them understand the three branches of government and the system of checks and balances, and I also plan on giving them a short lecture on the topic. If the texts and my lecture are not enough, perhaps these short films can help out:

My entire lesson plan can be seen here.

Obama and the Peace Prize, part two

Just a short blog entry to tell a few words of my plan of the week (concerning my English class that is). Originally me and my colleagues had planned to work on the UK the next few weeks and then turn the focus to the USA after Christmas. After we had heard the news about Obama and the Peace Prize, however, we decided to do the USA before Christmas and leave the UK for spring 2010. Last week our students worked on news from the English-speaking world, and this week we will take it one step further by letting them browse the internet for responses to the Nobel Peace Prize. We have also planned for them to write a short news article on the topic. Hopefully the fact that this event will influence Oslo in just a few weeks will make the students see the benefit of working on the assignment, too.

PS! Thank you, Kjetil for finding the online resources!

"English - the Language of Rock"

This week our students in the field of health and social services have started working on the topic "English - the Language of Rock". It is a fact, like it or not, that most Norwegian artists sing their songs in English rather than Norwegian, and one of the things I wanted the students to think about why this is so. It is quite obvious that artists in the whole of Scandinavia have to sing in English in order to reach out to a wider audience than just the other Scandinavians, but why do most Norwegian teenagers prefer listening to English texts rather than Norwegian?

When working on this topic, we want all of the students to prepare a presentation of a Scandinavian artist or group singing in English, and they are also going to present a song by the same artists. To prepare them for this mini-project, we have used the text "English - the Language of Rock" in the textbook "Tracks", and also some pre-reading activities dealing with English and music. You can read my entire lesson plan on this page. As you will see, I also included some grammar in the lesson plan, trying to make the students aware of the use of the definite and indefinite article.


Photo: "Guitar hero"

Subject-verb agreement, a never ending story

Time and time and time again throughout the school year I have to tell my students to check their written texts for subject-verb agreement. It seems like getting rid of these mistakes is almost impossible for some. Several times students have also come to me towards the end of the year and asked me what I actually mean when I say "concord mistakes. I know that we sometimes just have to spell things out to the students, but I must say I get a bit frustrated that they do not ask until the end of the year if they have not understood anything about this grammatical topic...

As an attempt to prevent this from happening this year, and in an attempt to try to teach them all what I mean by "concord" at an early stage, I start off this week's lesson by putting focus on the problem. My plan is to give the students a short introduction to the topic in which I tell some of the basic rules, and that they then work on various tasks individually. Since this will be the first day of English with their brand new computers, most of the activities are taken from a couple of web pages, NDLA and Exploring English. These pages and the activities they offer show me that I am not the only teacher fighting this problem in the classroom...


Picture from "Common English Grammar Mistakes"

The English language - how did it all start?

One of the competence aims for the first year students that really scared me when I first saw it, is the one that says that the students should be able to "explain the main characteristics of the development of English from an Anglo-Saxon language to an international world language". I guess I have always taught my students about how English came to be a world language, but the history of the language was not a part of the curriculum here in Norway until "Kunnskapsløftet" in 2006. Honestly, I believe the first time I really learned something about the history myself was as a master student at the university, and I therefore thought it a bit over the top to teach my own students about the topic. My opinion has changed, however, and knowing that they have to learn something about the history of the Norwegian language, too, it makes sense to point out some of the similarities between our own language, spoken only by 4,5 million people, and the number one world language English.

Using online resources for most part of my teaching, it has been a challenge to find pages on the internet dealing with the history of the English language in a way that is not too difficult for my students. EnglishClub.com has a page that can serve as a starting point, and I am also happy to find that Norsk Digital Læringsarena, NDLA, has come up with varoious resources on the topic. On this page we can read a short text about how the English language has developed through history, and I particularly liked the audio clip with examples of various varieties of English. I guess the students will also like the "Drag and drop" activities trying to place the origin of various words in the English language. So now that I have found some internet pages that I can use in class, I hope neither language history nor the teacher will scare away the students tomorrow afternoon. It will, after all, be our first meeting this year...


Picture: http://www.llp.armstrong.edu/5800/histho.html

The extended name tag

It is time to get down to the nitty-gritty stuff and start thinking about teaching again. The students come back to school tomorrow, and the first classes are just around the corner. As an EFL teacher I strongly believe that one of the most important things we can do with the students, is to make them start speaking English as soon as possible. I know for sure that way too many students believe that their English is not good enough, and that speaking a foreign language in front of 29 other students is a nightmare. I was one of those students myself when I went to school. My English is still far from perfect, but I have realised that the only way in which I can improve it is by using the language as much as possible.

I would like to share an activity that I have used in my classes the last couple of years, an activity which usually makes all of the students say at least a few words during the first English class of upper secondary school. It is called (I think...) the "extended name tag" and is something I learned at a course in cooperative learning in Canada three years ago. It goes like this:

• Give all the students a sheet of paper and tell them to write their names.


• Give them instructions about what to draw in the four corners, like "your favorite city", "a place you would like to go if you could choose anywhere in the world", "your number one hobby", "a place you visited this summer", etc.


• When I have done this activity in class before, I have usually put the students pairs of two and asked them to present their name tags to their partner. The partner then has to remember what he/she is told, so that he/she can retell it either to a small group of students or to the rest of the class.

My experience is that most students like this activity. They can talk about things that are familiar to them, and, abracadabra, they have spoken English and learned something about at least one of their classmates at the same time.

“For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice.” T.S.Elliot

Three days left before the summer holiday and it is time look back at the months that have passed, and it is also time to look forward to August and a new school year. As always, I have learned quite a few things this year, and even if I have now taught the same courses for three years in a row, the experiences are different from the previous years. I feel that this year has been a busy one; new students, new projects, new colleagues, seminars at various places in Norway, student exchange in Holland. Looking back, I do think the year has been great. Some of the things that I have done in my English classes this year have been a success, and here is a list of some of the things I know I will do next year:

• Continue using discussion groups rather than class discussions with the first year students. I really feel that these groups have made the students more active and more talkative, and also that this has been an all right way to dig into various topics from the syllabus.


• Read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time with the first year students. Almost all the students liked the novel, and my plan is to start reading it quite early in the first semester. Perhaps I will let them read a second novel in the spring term. Reading is good, and can really help all of us to improve our language skills.


• Using Exploring English when dealing with grammar, language and text structure. My school has also bought a lot of copies of the book, which I believe will be a nice supplement and quite useful.


• Make the students use glogsters and photostories as a way of presenting their material. Much more fun than the ordinary power point presentations!


• Watch the film Crash. It always works well with the students, and it is worth seeing time and time again!

So which things will I not do again next year? Honestly, I believe that most of the things we have done this year have worked quite well, and therefore I cannot come up with anything I know I am sure I will not do again another time. There is, however, room for improvement in various ways. As I have said above, I have taught the same courses for three years now, but this does not mean I have done the same things every year. I definitely hope that we can manage to find a way to assess the works of the students that can be less time consuming, but at the moment I am not sure how to do it. I also have some ideas about new things to do in class, new texts to read, etc., but I think I will wait until after the summer holiday to present these.

I would like to end this blog entry by a quite by Napoleon Hill. I think these words can be useful to keep in mind when planning a new school year and in life in general: "Do not wait; the time will never be ''just right.'' Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along. "


Photo: "Papion"

O, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?

One of the great things about being a teacher and not using an ordinary textbook, is that I am free to present material that I really like myself to my students. This week, for instance, my two groups have worked with "The Road Not Taken", and tomorrow we will watch Romeo and Juliet, the modern version. I guess that I would actually get more credit if I asked my students to read the "original" Shakespeare, but I quite honestly believe that a short extract from the play, the obligatory balcony scene, and the film will be sufficient for the first year students. After all, students and teachers are both tired at the moment; with the summer vacation only 3 1/2 weeks away we all need to tie the loose ends.

I have seen Romeo and Juliet many times, and even if the ending is so well known to me, I cannot help but hoping that this time, Juliet will actually wake up in time. I guess I am not the only one hoping for this happy ending, and Anne has suggested we let the students watch the video and read the lyrics to Taylor Swift's "Love Story", so that Juliet can finally get her Romeo...

I'm Nobody! Who are you?

My colleague Anne and I are planning next week's teaching, and Anne came up with the great idea of working with poetry. So far we have picked four poems, one of them being my favorite "The Road Not Taken". The way I see it, Frost poem is fairly straight forward so that everybody can say something about it without going too deep into metaphors and rhyme patterns. It has always been my belief that we need to help our students see the beauty of poetry before killing the joy by putting too much focus on terminology. I guess that deep inside I would like to be a teacher like Mr. Keating in "Dead Poets Society", a teacher who dares to be different, controversial and who really manages to make a change.



However, at the moment I am far away from being controversial in my teaching (at least I hope so), and I am not sure I will manage to make any great changes either. I do hope though, that our day with poetry can make the students see that there are different kinds of poems, and that somebody may find pleasure in reading them too.


I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - Too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise - you know!

How dreary - to be - Somebody!
How public - like a Frog -
To tell one's name - the livelong June -
To an admiring Bog!

Preparing a project

The last thing on our "to do"-list with the students this year is a project. Our curriculum says that the student shall be able to "choose an interdisciplinary topic for in-depth studies within his or her own programme area and present this". At first this seems to be both an interesting task and an activity in which all of the students should be able to show themselves at their best. However, the last two years have shown that this is not always the case. Many find it hard finding an approach to their projects and end up handing in cut-and-paste essays on famous football players and film actors. Boring! My question is: how can we help our students come up with interesting topics for their projects? How can we teach them to actually do some kind of research rather than spending a whole lot of time copying from the internet? I have made a suggestion to a project outline, but would very much appreciate some tips and help from others improving it, and hence making the projects more interesting.

Photo: "Help"

In between correcting papers..

There has not been a whole lot of time for blogging lately. I guess all teachers recognise the feeling of despair when you have too many papers to correct and simply not enough time to get your head above water? I really hate those weeks (and there seems to be more of them every year!) when I have to spend every night and every weekend correcting termpapers! However, it can also be kind of an inspiration when I see that some of my students have actually taken the advice I have given them, and really done a great job on their all-day tests.

I guess correcting papers would not be such a burden if I did not have to plan all my lessons and teach the entire week at the same time, but that is life. Some weeks ago I told about planning how to deal with the troubles in Northern Ireland in class, and that I find it quite hard knowing where to put focus. Due to various circumstances, we have not come around to teaching this topic until this week, and in the last minute I made some adjustments to my original plan. Teaching English in the same group for five hours (5 x 50 minutes to be accurate) in one day, means that I have to make sure the activities are varied and that the students are given "food for thought" in various ways. As an introduction to Northern Ireland I played Sinead O'Conner's This IS a Rebel Song to the class, and asked them what they knew about Northern Ireland and the conflict there. Most of them knew quite a few things, and it felt great to see that they actually tried to explain what was going on, even if they really did not understand it all (who can blame them...). The students were then to work in pairs with the text called "13 questions on Northern Ireland" and U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" (see here for more details on the activities), before I gave them a short lecture on some central historical events.

We finished off by reading the short story "The Sniper". I have used this text in class the last four years and it works every time. It might be that it appeals more to the boys than other stories and that they get more talkative, or it might just be that the students find the ending surprising and perhaps even shocking. Anyway, my exerience is that they really like to talk about this short story, and when asked to pick any story that they have read in school, quite many pick this one.

So much for Northern Ireland and this week's teaching. Sometimes when I correct papers Robert Frost's poem "Stopping by woods..." comes to my mind:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

I am looking forward to running around in the woods soon!

Photo: "Leave me alone, I know what I'm doing!"

When different cultures meet

Last weekend, while I was preparing this week's teaching, I searched the internet for texts that could tell us something about the present day situation for young immigrants in the UK. I believe things must have changed since the early 70's when East is East is set, and I have realised that I simply do not know enough about the situation today. I cannot remember having heard about racial problems in the UK in the news lately, and I do not know too much about Britain's policy either. So, if someone has any good ideas, please enlighten me!

What I found, however, are many texts which illustrate the conflict between first and second generation immigrants, and I include a list of these under. What I fear when dealing with texts like these, is that they only focus on the negative aspects of growing up as part of two different cultures. Surely, there must be good examples of people, in Britain and elsewhere, who find that this is actually a positive thing too?

Texts:

• Brick Lane


• A Home from Home


• A Pair of Jeans


• My Son the Fanatic


• How I was taught to be a proper English schoolboy


• An immigrant story


• Generation conflicts in Asian families in Great Britain


• Born abraod

Photo: 'I have rised up by my university+books...'

Term papers, grammar, multiculturalism and a dog

Right now I feel panic and frustration lurking in every corner and corridor; there are so many things I should have done, and there simply is not enough time for it all. Tomorrow I will meet one of my groups for the last time before their term tests next week, and the main focus will be on the upcoming tests. This term test will be the last chance for the students to really show their skills when it comes to writing English papers, and I will therefore start this week's lesson by giving them time to browse through all the comments I have given them on their papers this year, and also time to dig into various grammar topics. I made this collection of task and activities on grammar last week, hoping that everyone would find some exercises that could help them improving their grammar. We started working on these exercises last week, and I hope that some saw that this could actually help them; many asked if I could explain a bit more, and some said that they finally understood why I corrected them when they wrote "everybody are doing their best." Most of the exercises in this lesson plan are taken either from the Tracks/Passage pages or from Exploring English. I find it useful that these pages explain the grammatical topics in Norwegian, and that the English terminology is listed at the same pages.

This week I have also planned to continue working on multicultural Britain. The film last week was a success, and this week it is time to look at some facts and figures concerning immigration to the UK and how multiculturalism affects the British society. As I have said before, I have had some problems finding up to date-information on the topic, but hopefully we will manage by the resources available. My idea is that the students are to work in groups of four preparing a presentation on multiculturalism, hoping that a group activity will keep most of them busy and forcing them to read some of the texts I have picked out for them.

Last stop on this week's agenda is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Most of the students have managed to get hold of a copy of the novel, and it is time to start working on it. Knowing that reading is not the favourite occupation of many of the students, I believe it is necessary to give them time for reading at school, at least in the beginning. I suppose most of the students will find that reading the novel is not all that hard, and therefore I want them to do a close reading of at least parts of the book. My colleague Ann gave me the idea of letting the students pick out central paragraphs in the novel and then to explain their choice. I have therefore planned this rubric for them, and I will introduce it before they start reading so that they know what to put focus on. My colleagues Anne and Kjetil also suggested that we put focus on the characters and Anne has prepared this rubric in which the students have to fill in information and reflections on the various characters we meet in the novel.

My guess is that I have more than enough activities to fill the days this week, too, and that I have probably tried to squeeze too much into one day. My main goal, however, is to present activities that will engage my students in various way, and that they feel that they have actually done a good day's work by the end of class.


Photo: www.flickr.com/photos/62518311@N00/86907303

East is East and multicultural Britain

Walking the streets of almost any British city you meet people from all corners of the world, and stating what is typically "British" gets harder and harder. Ever since World War II a great number of people from the former British colonies have come to England in pursuit of a better life. All these people have, of course, given their contributions to the British society and influenced post-war Britain in various ways. This week we wanted to put focus on multiculturalism in Britain in class, and as an introduction to the topic we showed the movie East is east. The film is hillarious, but there is also a serious tone throughout, displaying the problems second generation immigrants face in Britain early in the 1970s. Growing up with a strict Muslim father from Pakistan and a more liberal British mother, the seven children in the Khan-family find themselves torn between the wishes of their father and their ever-growing identity as British.

In an interview the author of East is east, Ayub Khan-Din, tells that there are many parallels between the story of East is east and his own life: The parents are drawn directly from my own family. The youngest boy, Sajid, is me as a child. All the arguments in the film, all the theories behind the father's way of thinking, are my own arguments and theories which I developed from writing the first draft of the stageplay to the last draft of the screenplay. The different issues, the different aspects of different relationships - they're all very similar to my own background. Hence we can probably see the film as a realistic portrait of what life was like for young, ethnic Brits at the time. But what is the situation like today? Is the gap between the generations as wide as it used to be? Do second generation immigrants face other problems in Britain today than they did 40 years ago? I have tried to find some resources that could highlight some of these questions, but I have not found many yet. "The truth of multicultural Britain", published in The Guardian in 2001, is quite informative, however, telling how there is not "a single 'ethnic minority experience' of life in Britain", but a complex pattern of opportunity and disadvantage with as many differences within and between different ethnic groups as can be found by comparing the 'ethnic minorities' to the general population. An other page I like is the UK in the USA-page where we can read about the history of immigration, and also about how Britain is a result of its post-war immigration history. "Everything in modern Britain - from music and fashion to food and language - has been shaped by different ethnic communities, cultures and social groups," the article says, and in this way we may all be seen as influenced by this multiculturalism. One final page worth mentioning is the BBC page on the history of immigration from the 250 AD to the present.

Photos from allmoviephoto.com