Those who grew up learning not the letters a b c but rather ا ب ت , find difficulties getting adjusted in Luxembourg. The alphabetization classes are meant for asylum seekers who haven’t learned our Latin alphabet, most of them speak and write in Arabic. For Local Matters, we had a visit in the classroom.
In the alphabetisation classes, the students learn how to write in Latin letters. For Mohamad Benni, communication is the most important part, the key to language learning. Mohamad Benni founded the non-for profit Luxamitie in 2020, aiming to facilitate integration via language learning. Since then, the organization works together with the Ministry of Education to teach French classes to asylum seekers. “How can they communicate with people and make them understand their ideas, their thoughts without speaking the language? How can anyone employ somebody who doesn’t speak the language? Those who don’t work will be excluded from society if they don’t speak the language.”
Four days per week, they come to the container building behind the coque in Kirchberg, the premises of the Ministry of Education. The classes are free for asylum seekers, paid by the ministry. Most of the students are men, they have come to Luxembourg alone and now wait for their asylum procedure to be concluded in order to get their wives and children to Luxembourg via family reunification. In these last French classes of the semester, the students have already advanced a lot.
“They’ve started by learning the letters – and from there we’ve started to combine different letters. To combine these vowels a big problem for those who don’t speak French. That’s the big challenge for them, to see how to pronounce for example an a and an I together. When we explain that you sometimes need three or four letters to write the sound o in French, Sometimes two, sometimes 3, it makes them wonder.”
Once the students have learned how to combine two or three letters, they start with some simple words. The principle is simple: Several letters form a sound, several sounds form a word, and several words build a sentence. It’s simple in theory.
“The students have all very different levels of knowledge and comprehension. Plus, the age range is very vast. They are all adults, but some are in their early twenties, others are already 65 years old. But they all want to learn. Even elderly people want to be able to communicate and understand. That’s why they are here.”
Learning new languages is much easier for younger people. The muscles used for speaking are more flexible which makes it easier to produce new sounds. The brain as well is more agile and reacts faster to new learnings without overthinking them too much. Another point is that younger learners need the language more because they have to search for a job in order to live in Luxembourg – whereas elderly people are less dependent on the language in the daily live. Motivation is key for successful learning. Research has shown though that elderly people are more likely to tie the new learnings to their existing experiences. These connections work like an anchor for new knowledge.