A Further Challenge: Two new arrivals from Lebanon join the class
Sarah and Bilal (pseudonyms) are siblings who recently migrated to Australia with their family. They started Year 10 in School A at the start of 2003. They attended year 11 Arabic classes due to their high levels in MSA. Bilal was the only boy in this class.
Sarah and Bilal tended to complete their work and the rest of the students frequently relied on their translation to participate. Whenever a question was posed or an explanation required, the other students could not keep up, as Sarah and Bilal were usually quick with the answers. Sometimes the other students did not do their homework and they used Sarah's work in class.
The teacher observed that the students had been participating more in class since Sarah and Bilal started attending the lessons however the researcher felt that this was only due to Sarah's help.
Sarah's English was good and therefore English was the dominant language in communication amongst the girls. However the girls spoke the Lebanese dialect with Bilal as he did not feel comfortable speaking English. However, their language ability was little affected by this, as they seldom communicated with Bilal. Despite this, the girls noted that they had learned some new Lebanese expressions and idioms and Sarah claimed that her English skills had improved as a result of using it to communicate with the other students.