Language learning in refugees, an account of a Swedish study

Hans-Peter
Søndergaard
Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm

Flygtninge fra undertrykkende eller krigsramte samfund, er i mange tilfælde påvirkede af alvorlige traumatiske oplevelser og lider af post-traumatisk stresslidelse (PTSD). Dette indebærer vanskeligheder med hukommelse og koncentration. Traumatiske begivenheder i fortiden er konstant foruroligende, mens hukommelsen og evnen til at tilpasse sig den foreliggende situation reduceres; noget, som ikke nødvendigvis er blevet forstået tidligere. Dette har betydning for sproginlæring, fordi mange har oplevelsen af at være ude af stand til at fokusere, forstå eller huske, hvad der sker i løbet af undervisningstimerne.
Hukommelsesforstyrrelser relateret til PTSD er potentielt reversible, men forværres af stress.

During the nineties, the Swedish parliament decided to fund research aimed at torture victims among refugees. Due to that, I had the opportunity to participate in a study (Emdad et al., 2006; Emdad & Sondergaard, 2005; Sondergaard, Ekblad, & Theorell, 2001, 2003; Sondergaard & Theorell, 2004) wherein refugees, after receiving permanent permission to stay, were followed every third month for one year to look at which factors in their daily life made an impact on their health. There were many interesting findings in the study, but among the main findings were that worsening health was more often found when subjects with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) reported overwhelming demands in school, repeated instances of housing difficulties, and concern over those relatives in peril or ill. This was not necessarily true when the participants had not developed PTSD.
At the time, I had been working in an outpatient clinic specialised in torture victims, and I had often heard my patients complain about memory problems and learning difficulties. A typical remark might sound like ”I sit in the classroom, listening and understanding everything, but the next day it is completely gone”.  […]