The word “shopping” (R.28) is an adjective in the sentence.

It was early 2016 in the Calais Refugees Camp. We had students asking to learn English and French but they didn’t want to learn grammar or long lists of vocabulary. Opportunities for oral interaction were limited.

Food and cooking have become essential elements in many refugee education projects and it’s a great topic for the English classroom more generally. Recipes use relatively predictable and restricted vocabulary that can be easily adjusted for language level. The grammar can also be limited to the imperative: “First chop the onions. Then fry them in oil.” This creates a good opportunity to work on pronunciation, word stress and intonation using authentic materials: “Chop the tomatoes and add them to the onions”.

I first used cooking for language-learning while working alongside Kate McAllister with a community of male Sudanese refugees in Calais who had organised themselves around a small communal kitchen. It was very primitive only a small room with two gas burners connected to a gas tank, but some great meals were cooked there, usually with very limited ingredients.

Kate planned lessons around simple French and English recipes in exchange for Sudanese recipes from our students. Recipes were presented with simple diagrams and pictures, to be annotated in English and/or French and Arabic. “We talked. We learned. We cooked. We laughed. We ate. It was a good day.”

Cooking is also a great opportunity to take students shopping an authentic task of buying real food. Best of all, these lessons went beyond language learning, fostering a sense of community in the class.