MA students on the ‘Multilingualism, Migration & Diversity’ module at King’s College London (KCL) had the opportunity to take up placements with ESOL classes delivered by several London-based organisations. The module is taught by Mel Cooke and Ben Rampton and the placements are organised by the Hub for Education & Language Diversity (www.kcl.ac.uk/held), a collaboration between EFA and KCL. At the end of the module, students had the option of writing about their placement experience; we are thrilled to share four of those reports from 2026.
Two of the studies focus on the ways in which participatory pedagogies turn ESOL classrooms into sites for developing linguistic citizenship, agency and voice. These are:
Laura Fino Leon: From individual survival to collective agency in a multilingual ESOL class
Yawen Tan: An ethnographic case study of Empower ESOL: Sociolinguistic citizenship in
practice.
Two further reports focus on individual learners, describing the full and complex sociolinguistic lives that participatory ESOL seeks to connect with.
Jiayue Shao: ‘Inside Big, Outside Small’: Language repertoire, voice and agency in an Ethiopian ESOL learner’s migration experience
Keqi Lin: Different paths, different Englishes: Comparing my experience as an international student with an ESOL learner
We hope you find them insightful and useful.
