Pig Sty Avenue

The Knowledge of language and life in the UK guidance, "published for home office staff on 15th December 2015"is where I need to be reading next. A quick skim tells me that refugees looking for ILR don't have to take the tests, but that means applicants for citizenship do. Interesting distinction between the person who gets ILR but (perhaps) waits in hope that things back home improve, and the person who says, "I'm never going back there to live again, no matter what; this is my home now." So it's not as oppressive as I'd at first thought. Unless a refugee with ILR  is in limbo - they don't need to do the KoLL, but they won't get the benefits of citizenship. So this is the arena I'm moving into, that distinction between ILRs and Citizens, and what that actually means, what it feels like, and why anyone would choose to be an ILR. NB: This blog is quite interesting on the topic of doing the KoLL in Welsh. Will look at figures for L1s i...

The feedback for Submission 2 was about 1000 words, but it could have been 4: You Need to Focus! Quite right, too. I haven't really got a research question. I mean, for example, "Is it fair to require new Scots to undertake language testing?" Well, ok, but it gets binary, (Yes it is. No it isn't.) And anyway, could boil down to a semantic discussion about "fairness", which has meaning in language testing, but is a shoogly peg to hang a doctorate on. The economic aspect is interesting. It can be argued that, economically, demographically, we (Scotland) needs more people, and that means mostly people who know enough language to participate in our society and culture. But that's all assertion by me just now, I have no evidence, and I would struggle to get any because economics and demographics are not within my fields of previous knowledge. Maybe I need a narrative or story to get me into it. Not for actual research, but to identify where the research ...