Preview

Volunteering In The ESL Club

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
113 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Volunteering In The ESL Club
I am fortunate to live in a community which includes many immigrant families. Often I am tapped by friends to assist them in navigate challenges in which they do not feel comfortable in in either their cultural understanding or English language skills. I have seen the stress that not being able to communicate fluidly can put on families. I have observed that my community is often two tiered in which those who are native born exclude those who have emigrated. As with those lacking basic education skills, the immigrant community are not allowed to fully participate in the community. It is this experience that initially attracted me to volunteer in the ESL club.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    As an immigrant, it is hard for the non-native speaker to do things that they have never done…

    • 702 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The setting of the ELL instructor interview was inside Mrs. Trimble’s kindergarten classroom after her class had been dismissed. This was a one-on-one interview. Mrs. Trimble was very helpful, informative, and answered questions to the best of her ability. “Narrowing the achievement gap between students who are native English speakers and those learning English as a second language is one of the biggest challenges facing U.S. educators” (Pardini, P., 2006, p. 20). In this essay the discussion will cover abilities an ELL teacher should have, the role parents and teachers have within the classroom, and changes and benefits of SIOP protocol for native ELL students.…

    • 336 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Amy Tan, the author of “Mother Tongue,” gives the audience a new outlook and better understanding of the struggles that every immigrant who lives in United States had gone through every day. Amy Tan gives the audience the positive view on the “broken” English speakers by using herself and her mother as an example. Her mother did not get respect from the hospital and also the stockbroker due to her limited use of English. In contrast, Amy Tan was treated very well because of speaking proper English. This shows that there is discrimination between people who speak proper English and people who do not. Further, Amy Tan points out that although her mother speaking is not fluent, her comprehension is really good. The author argues that people should not judge the others (especially immigrants) based on their spoken language successfully because she uses most of rhetorical appeals pathos, ethos, and logos to show that language is not a credible indicator in measuring individual’s competency.…

    • 887 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Every day, Americans of all races encounter the problem of walking into a store and hearing people of other ethnicities speaking other languages. It is frustrating to have to interrelate with other individuals and not be able to connect fully with them because of a linguistic barrier. In the articles, The F Word by Dumas, Mother Tongue by Tan and Aria by Rodriguez, the difficulties of being an immigrant are stated. Many immigrants have problems adapting to a new society and sometimes society does not understand. Every day, they endure many problems such as not being understood, having to learn a new language, and discrimination.…

    • 893 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    society. The devaluing of the Spanish language is a loss cultural identity that weakens Latino connections with others in the Latino community once the English language is acquired. Latino students coming to the U.S. are forced to learn in English which hurts their chances of success. In the U.S. the special-education classrooms have become a dumping ground for students whose first language is not English and mistaking their lack of English-language proficiency for learning disabilities. Occurrences greatly stigmatize and disadvantage these students. If a teacher wants to improve the learning environment within the classroom he or she can incorporate speaking English and Spanish during lessons and discussion in class. But if the teacher does not speak Spanish he or she can make arrangement for an interpreter to come in and teach lessons for all students in the class (Spradlin, Parsons, 2008, pp. 120-…

    • 461 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Language is the system of words or signs that people use to express thoughts and feelings to each other. Language has an impulse on a person that allows them to make ties with a certain society, thus giving them a cultural identification. When residents of another country come to America and speak a contrasting language to English, immigrants most likely feel uneasy having to adapt to a completely new culture and learn the English language. During this journey, the individuals’ cultural identities might fade away as well as losing their efficient fluency on their native language. In Amy Tan’s, “Mother Tongue” and Richard Rodriguez “Aria: A Memoir of A Bilingual Childhood”, both authors experience the difficulties of language barrier and adjusting to a different lifestyle in order to develop as an individual in the United States.…

    • 970 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    My parents, like countless immigrants, relocated my family of five in pursuit of the highly sought after “American Dream.” The excitement quickly wore off once I was confronted with the realization that we will now be residing in a one bedroom, one bathroom basement apartment in Brooklyn, New York. While my parents attempted to provide for my brothers and me, I undertook the task of mastering the English language. In contrast to my classmates, my learning recommenced after school; I spent countless hours reviewing index cards struggling to obtain a grasp of the English language. For added support I attended an English as a second language class, where I received one on one attention. The alienation from the classmates that surpassed me with ease triggered feelings of inadequacy; this only fueled my determination to succeed.…

    • 487 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    If you turn over a permission slip or handout from a public school in Southern California on the backside you will find the same English words translated into Spanish. The act of translating the paper for the “child’s” wellbeing only provides a false illusion to the parent’s that the need to learn English is trivial. In reality it actually hinders the immigrants’ chances of success by denying the full language immersion in English that is needed to thrive in America, not just survive. And once one group of immigrants is catered for, it unjustly secludes others of equal treatment. The responsibility of speaking English falls on the shoulders of every immigrant. The lack of a shared proficiency in the English language…

    • 1253 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Language was not always easy to speak, write, and understand when I first moved here from India. Understanding two different culture shocks from Indian culture and American culture, was surely one of the toughest part about moving to the United States was. Everything was very different from my skin color to the way I spoke English. Every time I passed by people in the hallway, everyone would stare at me because they all knew about “the new girl from India.” Slowly as months passed by I started realizing the difference in culture, lifestyle, and behavior. Looking back before I moved to the US, growing up with a single parent impacted my view in society. My mom always taught me to be the hardest working person in the room. She always told me…

    • 410 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    When promoting effective communication we consider how hard and frustrating it can be for the families who speak no English, so we communicate the best we can and use a friendly…

    • 741 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Growing up in an immigrant household came with many difficulties. Learning English was very easy for me because I was always in daycare but coming home was hard because I could not communicate with my parents. Trying to communicate with my parents was very difficult and frustrating. Even though it was at a young age, it was difficult to live in a household who only spoke Spanish.…

    • 527 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Honduran Immigrants

    • 1384 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Furthermore, as educators, it’s important that we consider our students trauma, societal and familial circumstances. Students may have witnessed or experienced physical assault, sexual assault and exploitation. They may have crossed over the border by themselves or came with extended family. This student will come to the classroom in trauma. Teaching needs to be sensitive to this child’s circumstance. As an ESL educator, it’s crucial that we incorporate the students home country and cultural into the content that we teach. With that said, educators must be mindful of how students process this information. We should be deliberate in developing and fostering a supportive, nurturing spaces while at the same time allowing students to share as they…

    • 1384 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Are English language learners a new population? Researchers would like us to believe so but the reality is that they are actually a complex group of students, full of diversity in their educational needs, backgrounds, languages, and goals, who have been coming to the United States for years. An English language learner is a person that is from another culture that has come to the United States to live, learn, become educated and find a career. The United States is known as the melting pot of the world and we will continue to have people of other cultures coming to our country. Most of these immigrants speak different languages. You can walk down the street of most U.S cities and hear Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Spanish and other languages. Laws today provide all students in the United States equal access to a quality education no matter what their culture or background may be. Voter driven initiatives and laws have brought about many changes in education in our schools today in regards to our English language learners and how they are taught and expected to learn.…

    • 944 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    I worked as an intern for the legal department who were helping LSG’s refugee clients and other immigrants with their work permits, applications for green cards, and interviews, applications for naturalization, and provided fingerprinting services for DACA. During my internship there, I helped my work supervisor translate for some Cuban families who were preparing for their interviews with the DHS and at one point I even helped with the intake interview for one of their refugee clients. My background in Spanish allowed me to communicate fairly easily with the Cuban families, and our attempts to speak Spanish with them seemed to put the families at ease even though they also spoke English. However, since the other refugee client only spoke a little English and I did not speak any of the other languages he spoke, our interaction was more challenging and I learned more about how to navigate language barriers from this interaction. As much as I loved speaking Spanish with clients, this experience also made me realize that I needed more experience learning how to communicate with individuals who struggle with English when there is no translator present. In situations where there is a language barrier, it is sometimes difficult not to get discouraged or to feel embarrassed. However, this experience helped me learn to communicate because it taught me that…

    • 1227 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Without the knowledge of the English language, it is much harder to flourish in the United States. According to a survey of 2,929 Hispanic adults conducted by Pew Hispanic Center/Kaiser Family Foundation, “Nearly 90 percent of Latinos believe that adult Latino immigrants need to learn English in order to succeed in the United States.” In 1999, an immigrant who spoke no English wasn’t even earing half the salary ($16,345) of an immigrant who spoke English very well ($40,741). Nevertheless, a large majority of Americans believe that it would be very difficult for an immigrant who spoke no English to find a good job in this country.…

    • 484 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays