ESOL Students Visit to Manchester Arts Gallery
ESOL students visit to Manchester Art Gallery
Taking students out on visits is recognised to be educationally and
culturally beneficial to learning. Therefore, on Wednesday May 22, twenty
students who are learning English at Revive visited Manchester Art Gallery.
Their 3 teachers Eileen, Mags and Rita accompanied
them.
The visit was an outstanding success. We were so lucky that the
present temporary exhibition ‘An A to Z of Salford Art Gallery’ was
so appropriate for our students. The curators have put together an
exhibition of paintings and artefacts from the gallery’s collection,
arranged alphabetically. The letter B was represented by a giant
golden Buddha. This puzzled one student who was surprised that an
icon from a non-Christian religion would be on public display. This
gave rise to a lively discussion.
It was a positive experience for every student, at all levels.
Knowing the English alphabet allowed them to engage with the
exhibition. Perhaps the most difficult letter to fathom was ‘V’ for
ventriloquist! On display was an antique ventriloquist’s dummy.
Ventriloquist was quite a challenge to pronounce but we succeeded
eventually.
Some students even managed to fit in a visit to the permanent
exhibition in the basement, depicting a typical Victorian street.
This helped students to learn about a Salford of the past.
The visit gave the students time to socialise and practise speaking
English as, of course, this was the lingua franca. Our students speak
Arabic, French, Lingala, Farsi and many other languages and
dialects. But on this occasion all communicated and socialised in
their new language, English. They have achieved so much by their
commitment and diligence.
We pointed out that all public art galleries and museums in Salford
and Manchester are free. We hope the visit has planted a seed
and that they will have the confidence to visit them independently.
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