In the second term of 2008 the AMEP RC is commencing an exciting new project: a longitudinal ethnographic project with a large number of AMEP clients and their teachers in a number of AMEP centres from across the country. The research project will follow student learning over a year both inside the AMEP classroom and outside. The research team, which consists of academics from the AMEP RC and AMEP teachers, will aim to get a systematic understanding of where clients in the early settlement phase use English outside the classroom. This understanding together with classroom data will allow us to consider the fit between language learning inside and outside the classroom.

There are three overall research questions:

• What kinds of interactions in English (spoken, written and computer-mediated) do contemporary AMEP clients engage in inside and outside of the classroom during their time in the AMEP and afterwards?
• How are the two related and how can their fit be improved?
• How are interactions in English different for different learner groups and how can language training be customised to meet the language needs of different client groups?