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Newham Council Community Language Survey Speakers of Gujurati
1.
Characteristics of respondents
75
respondents answering the Language Survey were speakers of Gujurati.
Table 1 summarises their general characteristics.
·
63% of the respondents were female and the vast majority were aged over
45 (95%), with two out of three respondents aged over 55.
·
84% originated in India, with the remainder originating largely in Africa
(8%, or 6 respondents from Kenya and 1 respondent from Tanzania).
·
Virtually 9 out of 10 of the Gujurati speakers interviewed (89%) had
lived in this country for more than 10 years, and two out of every three
for over 20 years.
Table 1: Characteristics of Gujurati language respondents
2.
Language and communication skills
Language most comfortable using
All
of the respondents were most comfortable using Gujurati when speaking.
With regard to reading or writing, a proportion gave no answer as to
which language they were most comfortable using as Table 2 below shows,
but virtually all those answering were most comfortable with Gujurati
(1 respondent preferred to write in Punjabi).
Base
= all respondents
Having
stated which language they felt most comfortable using, respondents
were also asked about any other languages they felt comfortable using
for everyday conversations. Three out of four volunteered no other language,
but 21% mentioned Hindi, and a couple of respondents mentioned each
of Punjabi, Katchi and Swahili.
Only
one respondent was also comfortable with holding everyday conversations
in English.
Formal verbal communication in English/ own language
Respondents
were asked how confident they are about talking formally and understanding
what is being said when someone is talking formally to them – they were
given the examples of talking to their Doctor, the Police or the Council.
They were asked about their talking and understanding in both English
and their own language. Table 3 below compares the proportions able
to talk formally in English and understand when English is spoken formally
to them, with those able to talk or understand their own language in
a formal situation.
Respondents
were not at all confident about being able to communicate verbally in
English – the vast majority, over 80% in each case, say they cannot
talk formally or understand formal talk in English very well, and 15%
not at all.
Among
respondents who have been in this country over 20 years, two out of
three feel they cannot communicate well in English in formal situations,
and over a quarter say they cannot communicate at all.
Respondents
show limited confidence about talking and understanding in a formal
situation when using their own language – only one in every eight say
they could communicate very well, with the majority (85%) saying they
could communicate quite well.
Table 3 : Formal communication: talking and understanding
Formal written communication in English / own language
When
asked about communicating in writing in English, respondents are less
confident than with communicating verbally. Over half (56%) say they
could not read a formal letter in English at all, and a further
43% not very well. The vast majority (80%) would not feel able to write
a formal or official letter in English at all, and the remaining 20%
say not very well.
However,
respondents are much less confident about writing a formal letter in
their own language than any other form of communication in their own
language – over 80% say they could read and understand a formal
letter very well or quite well, but only half as many (41%) believe
they could write a formal letter very well or quite well.
Confidence
in their ability to read English does not improve over time – of those
who have lived here over 20 years, 64% say they could not read a formal
letter in English at all and 72% that they could not write such a letter
at all.
Table 4 : Formal communication: reading and writing
Reading an English newspaper/ publication
There
are no Gujarati speaking respondents who are confident that they
are able to read and understand the information in a daily newspaper
such as the Sun, Mirror, Guardian or Times. One out of five respondents
are not very confident and four out of five not at all confident about
their ability to read a newspaper in English.
Table 5: Level of confidence in being able to read a daily newspaper
in English Base
= all respondents
3.
Contact with the Council
Use of council services
Only
36% of respondents claimed to have used council services in the past
(27 respondents), giving a variety of reasons, most often for council
tax payment or enquiries (41%), housing benefits (30%) or with regard
to benefits in general (30%).
Table
6 below shows the level of understanding in both verbal and written
contact with the Council.
(Clearly
sample sizes are small so responses should be viewed with caution.)
Table 6: Ease of understanding Council staff/ letters from Council
Verbal contact with the council
81%
of respondents had had face-to-face contact with council staff, while
7% (2 respondents) had spoken to them on the telephone and 7% (2 respondents)
through an interpreter.
The
majority had experienced difficulty in understanding the council staff
that dealt with their enquiry, as shown in Table 6 above. Only a third
said it was fairly easy to understand council staff, and 66% had experienced
some or great difficulty.
Over
three-quarters (78%) were presented with an option to use an interpreter,
and five out of the six respondents not given this option felt that
this would have helped.
Of
those 21 respondents given the option of using an interpreter, all then
mostly understood the council staff as a result. No respondents felt
that having an interpreter failed to improve their understanding.
When
visiting Council offices, the majority of the respondents normally take
someone else with them, only 22% say they go alone:
-
56% take a friend
-
22% take a familymember
-
1 respondent takes an interpreter
Written contact with the Council
As
with verbal contact, the majority of respondents only understand letters
received from the council with difficulty (Table 6). None find letters
or leaflets fairly or very easy to understand, 59% experience ‘some
difficulty’ and over 40% ‘great difficulty’.
Virtually
90% of respondents said it would help if letters were translated, essentially
because it would allow them to read it for themselves and be independent.
4.
Communication options
Newspaper readership
15%
of all respondents do not regularly read any newspaper. Table 7 below
shows the most popular newspapers among the sample, dominated by Gujurat
Samachar read by nearly a third of the sample (31%) and Gauri Gujurat,
read by 12%.
A
further 40% of the sample say they read Gujurati or Asian newspapers
without specifying the title.
One
or two respondents mention each of Janxtria, Lotto, Jung and The Sun.
Table 7: Readership of newspapers
Broadcast media
Only
a tiny proportion of respondents (5% or less) does not listen to any
radio or TV channel in their own language.
Most
popular among radio programmes is Sunrise Radio, which 95% of all respondents
claim to listen to regularly.
By
far the most mentioned TV channel is Zee TV, watched regularly by almost
half of all respondents (48%). A further third of respondents (35%)
say they watch Asian or Gujarati channels without specifying the name.
The only other specific television channels mentioned by more than one
respondent are TV Star (3%) and Sky Channels (4%).
Computer ownership
Only
12% of all respondents live in households where someone has a computer
– none own a computer themselves, but 9 respondents
have a family member who owns one. However, there were no respondents
who would be able to use the computer to access information.
Table
8 compares the proportions of the sample who can be reached by the different
media types.
Table 8: Exposure to different media types Base
= all respondents
5.
Other sources of information
Voluntary organisations visited
89%
of all respondents regularly use or visit at least one voluntary organisation.
Of these 67 respondents:
·
67% mention GWA – representing 60% of the sample as a whole (45 respondents)
·
16% the Ekta Project - representing
15% of the whole sample (11 respondents)
·
7% the Sathi Day Centre (5 respondents)
·
4% Fair and Share (3 respondents)
No
other centre or organisation is mentioned by more than one respondent.
Although
sample sizes are too small for any detailed analysis GWA seems to be
visited by those respondents who have lived in this country the shortest
times, whereas the Ekta Project is favoured by older respondents and
those who have lived here the longest.
Religious venues visited
A
similar proportion of respondents regularly attends a religious venue
– 87%. In most cases, these 65 respondents did not specify the name
of the Hindu Temple visited. The main religious venues specified were
the Radha Krishna Temple, the Upton Centre and Mandir – each mentioned
by 14% or 9 respondents – and the Luxmi Marayanar Temple (6%, 4 respondents)
and Shreenath Temple (5%, 4 respondents).
Sources of help and advice
Asked
where they would go for help, advice or support, the highest proportion
of respondents, 39%, would go to their Community Centre, a further 12%
to their local ‘service centre’, 9% would turn to the Ekta Project and
3% to the Trinity Centre (2 respondents).
24%
mention the Council offices or Town Hall, 16% the Citizen’s Advice Bureau
and 5% suggested the Law Centre.
Only
5% said they would ask their friends, family and neighbours.
Other
possibilities mentioned by a couple of respondents were the Warden’s
Office and social workers.
Usual sources of information
When
asked about ‘the most common way’ that they hear information (e.g. events,
benefits etc), well over half of respondents refer to leaflets in English
(61%). Only 5% mention leaflets in their own language. A third of respondents
(33%) rely on word of mouth for their information.
Table 9: Most common way of hearing information Base
= all respondents
Respondents
were also asked if they could think of anywhere else information could
be publicised to make it easier for them to access. Around a third had
no suggestions to make. Table 10 summarises the main suggestions put
forward, dominated by Community Centres suggested by 63% of respondents.
Religious centres were mentioned by one in 10 respondents and medical
centres by 8%.
Table 10: Suggested places for publicising information Base
= all respondents
When
asked which format would be most useful for information to be
supplied in, respondents showed an overwhelming preference for text
translations (88%) rather than audio, video or telephone translations.
Text is preferred across all age groups.
The
main reasons given for this preference are that text is:
·
easier to understand (86%)
·
can read it myself (44%).
Only
a small percentage (7%) believe that the text translation is the least
useful format for information in their own language.
Video
and audio translations are generally regarded as the least useful
format for information. Almost a half of respondents name video as the
least useful (47%), and a further 31% feel audio tape translations would
be least useful, in both cases seeing tapes as ‘more difficult’ and
‘not necessarily appropriate’.
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