Update: 23/05

I'm finally back on this blog to work it out a lot more intensively in the coming two weeks. You can expect a lot more fresh content, and i will be monitoring your comments.

Tonight, while having a conversation with Alifa, a South-African student who has been in the UK for the past 17 years, I wrote down a few of a her sentences which i found very telling:

• On regard to my conception of the glass-wall: With foreigners "It is always the same conversation". She meant that she heard this conversation again and again.
• "I've met foreign people studying English, and their teachers tell them 'if you want to speak, go out in a pub'"
• "It is the same problem for the second or third generation immigrants I am with in my course, they find it hard to speak with the English"
• I asked: How many friends do you have here: "10". How many English friends do you have: "1"
  

I will probably be interviewing Alifa in greater length in the coming week to find out more about her experience.

My teacher Paul Slater has kindly forwarded the address of this blog to his student in Master of TESOL (Teaching English as a Second Language), and I have had interesting comments on what was i enclosing as part of my plan.
Here are a few clarifications that I've written as an answer in the comment section:

• As an answer to Henri Page, on what was i defining as "the English man": what i call the "average English-man" is any working to middle class white male, with a relatively low education or a low interest in education (understand: he went through his studies remembering little and changing even less), a non-existent foreign experience/interest (although he could have learned some French/German back in school), whose social activities runs around a mix of football/pub/cars/clubs. He may be working, but could as well be a student at Uni (although i have the theory that if a student he will open up after working a few years). Please note that I am NOT focusing on the Lads/Chavs/Yobs phenomenons but on a larger overall group.

• Dasos pointed out that "I feel that commenting about 'those people' isn't the way forward. I can detect the attitude / outlook of 'us and them,' ("Why is it that I can't get along with the English man?" "I don't understand him / them.") and there has to be something more to all of this than that". While i do agree with him that there is a risk in this type of thinking I answered him that "This is precisely what i am interested to look into: Why do we have this feeling of them and us? Why only in England? What makes the English man so special in this matter? Why is it that in other cultures the missing bricks of a foreigner's integration are easier to find out? What are the principles to follow that could help us to integrate? What do English people do to accept and appreciate each others?"

Overall it sounds that i am getting great intellectual feedback from the people i am talking with. However i still need to establish a sets of questions for my interviews to structure what I am looking for.
If you have any suggestion or critics regarding my approach and the questions that i am asking please feel entirely free to use the comment section as I'm really looking forward to making it as interactive as possible.