Author: Ellen Smith, Julia Pisarek, Rachel Lonie, Anna Phelps, Nick Heaney and Helen McDiarmid
Date of Publication: June 2017
Series Title: Scottish Languages Review Issue 32
Notes: DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.5100535
Last summer twenty students from the University of Edinburgh travelled to Germany for a project to help the integration of refugees. Recognising the importance of language in order to integrate, we led a summer school for children in order to maintain and develop their German whilst they were not at school over the summer holidays. We also attended a local refugee café where refugees came to meet others in a similar situation to them and locals who were offering advice. Here several languages could be heard, using any means to communicate and interact with each other. During our time there we experienced ourselves some of the challenges of integration. Whilst living in a German village we had to support each other with our range of language abilities just as we had seen happening in the summer school and at the refugee café.