The dream of becoming a British citizen

In one such classroom gather together people of various family, social and religious background: Muslims and supporters of the Orthodox Church, housewives and people of rather obscene occupations.

Ideal language learners are keen on slipping into natives' shoes and thus attach great attention to the cultural authenticity of French bread or English breakfast, for instance. Their desire to learn the language of others is often coupled with a desire to behave and think like them in order to be recognized and validated by them [Kramsoh 2014: 81]. However, the notion "cultural authenticity" is very relative. What is authentic in one context might be inauthentic in another. Then there always exist the undesirability of imposing on learners a concept of authenticity that may devalue their own authentic selves as learners. Thus cultural appropriateness may need to be replaced by the concept of appropriation, whereby learners make a foreign language and culture their own by adopting and adapting it to their own needs and interests. The ability to acquire another

8 The direct speech is given as in the original without correction.

person's language and understand someone else's culture while retaining one's own is one aspect of a more general ability to mediate between several languages and cultures, called cross-cultural, intercultural, or multicultural communication.

But the story concerns about the fact that English language teachers from Britain share their culture lavishly with anybody but don't study the culture of their learners in return. Thus intercultural communication with their learners is not always a success.

In 2015 one in 20 of the British population is Muslim, and three quarters of them firmly identify themselves as 'British' (Testing the echo 2015: 12). At the very beginning of the play we are hearing the conversation in Arabic between Jamal and Mahmood, where Jamal pronounces a quotation from Qur'an: 'Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites' [Edgar 2008: 16]. The aggressiveness of some Muslims is very often extreme. They are obsessed with the idea of converting infidels into Islam. The census in England and Wales does not ask people about their past religions. British mosques do not keep a central record of conversions (the Economist explains). It seems that tolerance and political correctness proclaimed by the Western World is a one-way and very tricky policy. There is always a loophole for sly people to find the explanation for being intolerant.

One of the students, Ranjit, says: 'Values is all the words' [Edgar 2008: 38]. We cry them out but very often don't give a damn. Such assets as children, family and even the life of a human being are not always worthy in reality in many societies. Some ideology is what matters to many and ego- and ethnocentrism leads to most essential problems and conflicts in the modern world.

Martin, one of the teachers, speaks about utopia we all strive for but never reach. However he and his colleagues try hard to teach English and British Studies to the immigrants. Sometimes it appears to be an insuperable difficulty.

Nasim (from Egypt) cannot take pictures with a pork sausage at home. It's against her faith.

NASIM: Pig is unclean.

EMMA: Not to British people [Ibid: 75].

Never a Muslim can drink alcohol. It's haram. Nasim doesn't also watch TV programmes. It is impossible to discuss with her the majority of the topics preplanned by the syllabus. And in spite of the fact that there is a rule in college not to use mother tongues she is constantly jabbering something discontentedly to herself in her language.

Nasim appears to be the brightest representative of her culture in the play. She has a specific feature: she never answers questions immediately. She asks her own question in return. She belongs to a high-context culture, according to Edward T. Hall's theory. This means that a representative of this culture needs to trust another person in order to be able to answer frankly:

NASIM: You want I give my opinion about George Bush and Tony Blair?

TOBY: I want you to pass speaking and listening at ESOL Entry Three... [Edgar 2008: 51].

Very often the students of this ESOL class draw conclusions which their teachers didn't mean and to which they are not prepared. So the reactions of their students take them aback. Nasim doesn't want to study at Toby Pritchard's class because of his non-traditional for her cultural society sexual orientation. She doesn't want to have anything in common with the liberties of this country. It's incomprehensible or even unbearable for the Muslims to know that only 10 per cent of people in Britain go to church.

The aims of the British government giving a chance for immigrants to get citizenship and of the would-be British citizens do not coincide. The first wants to make people loyal to the Queen and the Kingdom as a whole, to respect its rights and values such as freedom, fairness, decency. The latter want to hide from wars in their countries, to avoid poverty and famine, sometimes to reunite with the family that even doesn't live in

Britain. So they have no motivation to become real Britishers and love this country.

HALIMA (from Somalia): 'I come to this country not for community diversity' [Edgar 2008: 38].

NASIM: 'I came because you want my father to work here' (Ibid: 72).

SEMIR: 'I left Iran because they make me soldiers' [Ibid: 72].

Their understanding of the mentioned above values is quite different.

NASIM: 'I wish for right to live by laws of my religion' [Ibid, p. 52].

The methods of teaching practiced in a democratic, progressive society are not acceptable for the representatives of the so called developing countries. They cannot participate in debates and support a point of view which they don't share. At one point Emma comes to a conclusion that being a Muslim is incompatible with being 'British' [Ibid: 79]. Nasim gets offended when Emma deliberately gives her a card to prove a point of view different from what Nasim has. Emma explains why she did so:

To see if you can see the other side. Some people say that's what being British is about... Seeing the other person's point of view [Ibid: 84-85].

The question arises whether Emma can see the point of view of her own students? She doesn't know their stories and what they have undergone to get to England. May be she would have behaved more attentively and carefully and would have thought of teaching methods and topics much closer to their perception. Understanding is a mutual thing!

Dragoslav from Serbia says to Jasinka from Kosovo: 'There is no country called Kosovo' [Ibid: 38]. He doesn't want to admit this historical fact and withhold it in the presence of the representative of this rather new country. Many of his people died in those wars of Yugoslavia at the end of the 1990-s.

Arguing with Nasim Emma pronounces a phrase: 'I don't think that you have to kill yourself or anybody else to prove what you believe in' [Ibid: 86]. She cannot grasp Nasim's standpoint why at all she can say such things! How can love to God be combined with even the thought of bringing death to people!

Still they all want to pass the citizenship test.

Ranjit says that he can say all what the British people want, but this won't be his opinion [Ibid: 82]. He does it only to pass the test on becoming a British citizen.

Nicole in the Citizenship blog writes: 'The test is stupid' [Idib: 21 ].

Of course the book of about 200 pages according to which these people are getting ready for the test cannot turn around the outlook of the people with completely distinct mentality however well the classroom is organized. In spite of the fact that Life in the UK is revised and corrected almost every year it is still complicated and inaccessible to understanding for many representatives of far different cultures. While reading this coursebook people get the impression that the most important moral principle is not to use unlicensed minicabs and other minor points that seem strange and absurd to those who have come from the lands of devastation and suffering.

To create a balanced and tolerant society it is necessary to make people feel happy. People who were made to leave their countries due to some negative reasons and don't feel at home in a new place, are hardly happy. So it is difficult to expect them to love their new environment. Most of these people are of a very low level of education if any. Hamid says: '...I cant imagin what my friends will do who can hardly spell BRITISH word' [Edgar 2008: 43]. Muna, the stepdaughter of one of the main characters, knows much more about the country they live in at the moment, but does she love it? At school children shout at her that she wants to kill people on the buses. Due to this she doesn't want to be a Muslim. But will she be able to love this country? Is it possible for her to feel happy here?

The Government makes decisions but their implementation is imposed on common people: teachers, policemen, doctors, shoppers, neighbours. They all have nothing to do with the decisions of politicians and they are not prepared to encountering with manifestations of unknown cultures. Thanks to David Edgar's play we can imagine the situation with immigrants in details and see how far their interrelations with the local people can go. The play is based on a serious research of the behaviour of immigrants in the classroom, at home, in their blogs. We wanted the best, you know the rest, says a well known proverb.

The Historians in the play assert that all the countries are invented. That means that all that cultural tunica we wear is only secondary to our human nature. Hence why we do pay so much attention to it and when first rate values will at last come up in the world!

Closer to the end of the play we read the lines from Qur'an again performed by Mahmood: 'Whoever kills an innocent, it is as though he has killed humanity entire' [Ibid: 101 ]. Striking upon such controversial ideas brings me to the opinion that the aim of this book is description of human development with all its ups and downs for people to learn on previous mistakes and experiences.

The problem of peaceful co-existence aroused in the play needs to be discussed with students of universities. By means of such discussion they will be able to get a more clear vision of how to build relationships with the representatives of other cultures, to be more attentive and careful in the choice of topics for discussion and fields of interaction. Most of all it concerns the students of foreign languages departments as their major function is to bridge cultures and construct friendly communication and cooperation.