Free English classes will be available to Eastern Euro-peans who have travelled to the Truro area to find work.

Expansion of the European Union on January 1 has meant that as of this month Romanians and Bulgarians are able to work in the UK, with many travelling to Cornwall for flower-picking and other agricultural jobs.

Some have already found work, with a number of Romanians joining around 60 Polish nationals who are already working for Falmouth dock company A & P.

And to help tackle any language difficulties, Eastern Europeans who have travelled to Cornwall will be able to make use of free English lessons that are being offered by Truro College at their Open Learning centres in Truro, Newquay and St Mawes.

The classes are available to all non-English speakers through the college's English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) course. The course is joined with the Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) course, on which students are trained to teach English as a second language.

English language classes are being offered for free to non-English speakers during certain times over five months of the year - April, May, July, August and December - to allow teacher trainees who are nearing the end of their training course to have the opportunity to practice their craft and be assessed by tutors in an authentic environment.

Sarah Yates, course organiser, said: "The trainees are full of enthusiasm and creative ideas at this stage of their training and are really keen to start teaching real' classes. This is a great opportunity for students to experience lots of different teaching styles and to cover lots of language areas, all for free. Not everyone can afford regular English classes so we're hoping that these sessions will give local people who need language training a bit of a start."

She said that she hoped to raise awareness of the classes to non-English speakers who may not be aware that the classes were available free of charge.

"There are certain people in the community who might not know we are here. People whose children may go to school and become bilingual but their parents might stay monolingual. We're saying to people that there's a good opportunity for you to get free classes for four or five weeks of the year," she added.

Ms Yates said that over the years of running the courses the numbers of students on the English class had steadily grown, but that she did not expect a "massive influx" over the next few months just because of changes in EU membership.

And she stressed that the classes were open to all non-English speakers, no matter where they were from.

Anyone interested in attending the free classes should contact the Truro College Open Learning Centre on 01872 261151 for more details and for specific dates.

n Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU at midnight on New Year's Eve. Under new rules brought in by the UK, the two new EU members will have to endure extra work restrictions compared to other EU citizens. Low-skilled workers from the two countries can only be employed on existing quota-based schemes in the agriculture and food processing industries. Skilled workers, students or the self-employed can continue to work if they get a work permit under the "highly skilled migrant programme." Those who break the rules can be given on-the-spot fines of £1,000, while employers can be fined up to £5,000 for allowing law-breaking to go on. Hundreds of Polish workers settled in Cornwall after their country joined the EU in 2004.