TEFL blog » ESL & Immigration

We’ve written a lot on the blog about ESL and immigration issues. Well, now the two have come together on film, with the February 12 DVD release of the award-winning ESL: English as a Second Language.

The synopsis on the film’s website describes it as the story of “two people from very different sides of the same culture”.  Director Youssef Delara says that his initial idea was to create an ESL classroom and follow the highs and lows of nine of its characters. Eventually, though, he decided to follow primarily two of them, an illegal immigrant in search of a better life, and a “second generation Latina forced to attend the class to work off community service hours”.

Have a look at the website for more, and if you’ve seen the film, why not tell us what you thought below…

How’s this for an approach? The YWCA’s recently finished summer camp helped students to learn English while swimming, counting pennies and liquefying ingredients in a blender.

The idea was to integrate language skills with skills for survival in the USA for the children from Ethiopia, Laos, Lebanon, Mexico, South Korea and Vietnam attending the camp.

Swimming pool lessons included things which the children and their families really need to know, like how to tell which is the deep end and which is the shallow end, and what swimming costumes are appropriate for public pools.

Read more about the camp at the Chicago Courier News.

Carpentersville, a suburb of Chicago with 37,000 residents, voted this week to make English the only official language, despite the fact that 40% of the residents are Latino.

According to Trustee Judy Sigwalt, quoted in the Chicago Tribune, multiple languages are responsible for tearing her community – and country – apart.

Village President Bill Sarto, however, thinks that the measure will only succeed in painting Carpentersville as an unwelcoming community.

So who’s right? Should multilingual communities be encouraged or suppressed? Do they help to unite or divide? Have a look at the article and decide for yourself…

Should Asian women be required to speak English before being granted a UK visa?

Jack Straw thinks so. He is calling for a debate on the issue, focusing the discussion on Asian women because many stay at home and so do not get the chance to learn English in the workplace. Straw’s suggestion comes not long after government plans to restrict free English classes to the unemployed and those on income support.

This led Anjum Anwar, leader of the Lancashire Council of Mosques, to say “Of course Jack wants everyone to learn English but the government is about to demolish funding for ESOL classes. It’s all very well demanding something from the public but not supporting them”.

What do you think about this issue? Have a look at the article and post a comment below…

We posted a while ago about the £110 million that the British government spends on translation services for immigrants every year.

Well, it seems that the argument that this money could be better spent on English lessons is winning, as the government is proposing to cut benefits to claimants who do not take English lessons.

This is an important step by the government in recognising that English language skills are important both for work and for social integration. Brendan Barber, writing in the Guardian Online, however, highlights the other side of the coin, a catch-22 where many low-paid immigrants will suffer simply because ESOL classes are not available for them to take in the first place.

What do you think about this paradox? Have a look at the article and post a comment below…

If you were asked what the official language of the United States is, what would you say? I suspect that most non-Americans would say English. Well, you may be surprised to know that the US has no official language at national level.

And this, according to a recent poll, is not good enough for the majority of American people. 60% of Americans polled think that the government is not doing enough to protect English as the “common, unifying language of the United States.”

This has prompted a bill to be introduced in Congress to make English the official language. Newt Gingrich, a supporter of the bill, said that “the civilization will decay and the culture will collapse” without a common language, and 92% of those polled said that a common language was important to “maintain unity as a nation”.

Gingrich says that the proposal is pro-immigrant, and 78% of those polled think that the government should be doing more to help immigrants with English.

What do you think? Is a multi-lingual society a good or a bad thing? Does it hinder communication or promote multi-cultural values? Read the full story and post a comment below…

In a post at the end of last year, we looked at immigrant-advocacy groups across the US who are bringing the ESL classroom to the streets, for immigrant workers who cannot attend lessons in the classroom for financial or transportation reasons.

Well, the School on Wheels literacy program in Chicago is doing something similar, offering free ESL tutoring on a bus. The bus, which has been revamped into a classroom, visits different suburbs with immigrant populations each week on a rotating basis.

The program’s 325 participants receive one-on-one tuition from 280 volunteers, who themselves undergo two days of training.

The program was started in 1993 by a former elementary teacher, Sister Marybeth McDermott. She said that they simply “went into the neighborhoods and rang the doorbells and asked if they wanted English classes”.

Have a look at this article for the full story…

Last week we posted that the British government spends £110 million a year on translation services for immigrants, money that many would argue would be better spent on English classes.

Perhaps the government should follow the example of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Teaneck, NJ, USA. The church has recently started offering ESL classes to immigrant day labourers on the road. The church has offered classes on their premises for some time, but recognise that not all immigrants can attend, for transportation or financial reasons. So instead of the immigrants coming to them, they’ve taken the classes to the immigrants, teaching them while they’re waiting for work.

The classes focus on language useful to the immigrants in their work, such as the names of tools, explaining what the matter is if they get sick, and asking when they will get paid.

The feedback from the participants in the article is positive. One immigrant, who is also co-director of an immigrant resource centre, says the classes “provide visible evidence that immigrants are eager to assimilate into society” and that “we really want to adjust but we don’t always have the opportunity”.

The church, according to the article, is not the first organisation to bring the ESL classroom to the streets, with immigrant-advocacy groups nationwide doing the same thing.

So it would seem that given the opportunity, immigrants are keen to learn English and integrate into American society. Should the British government learn from this example and change its funding priorities? What do you think? Have a look at the article and post a comment below…

At a time when issues of integration and cross-cultural understanding are hot political topics in the UK, the British government has revealed, according to this report in the Daily Express, that it spends £110 million a year on translation services for immigrants.

Apparently, the costs include a local council translating details of its refuse collection service into 15 languages so that non-English speakers can understand the recycling system, and one-to-one “Quit Smoking” sessions in Turkish.

The report quotes the head of MigrationWatch UK as saying “We should expect immigrants to learn English and should not remove the incentive to do so by spending millions on translation.” A Bangladeshi woman quoted in the report agrees, saying “When you are trying to help us you are actually harming… We don’t need to speak in English at all.”

On the other side of the argument, the head of the Commission for Racial Equality is quoted as saying that the costs were a feature of globalisation that we should “just soak up”, and a project manager for a local council project says “If they need it in their language we make sure they have it… everybody should have equal access to knowledge of the services”.

So, who is right?

Could this money be better spent on teaching English, to help migrants integrate into British society, taking on the “obligations that come with the privilege of living and working in Britain” as Tony Blair pointed out in a speech on migration two years ago.

Or should everyone have the right to access knowledge in any language regardless of the cost to the British taxpayer?

What do you think? Post a comment below…

“English as a Second Language week” was held this month in Toronto, aiming to highlight the growing significance of ESL in Ontario. One of the key isssues was that of ESL and social integration, with growing numbers of immigrants coming to Ontario each year.

In this article in the Epoch Times, Sharon Rajabi, President of TESL Ontario says that immigrants need cultural as well as English language training, so that they know how to work in a new culture and what the conventions are”.

According to Rajabi, Torontonians are sensitive to immigrants’ needs. But is this true everywhere? Do all cities embrace the influx of immigrants in need of ESL training as Toronto does? Should we be doing more to implement ESL programs in the workplace and in the community, to ease social integration?

And what about the other way around? Thousands of ESL teachers every year go to live and work in non-English speaking countries. Many make an effort to embrace the culture and learn the language. But others choose to make little or no effort to integrate socially or linguistically. What do you think? Do expatriate ESL teachers have an obligation to integrate, to learn cultural conventions, to learn the language - not least so that we can understand some of the linguistic problems our students are having? Post a comment below…

We recently received an email from a visitor to our website, who asked that we post her request for advice on our blog…

“I am an Indian national with a Bachelors degree in Computer Science and Engineering, and I would like to work and study for a higher degree in Canada. I have relatives in Canada and would like advice about applying for a visa and to Canadian universities.”

If you have any advice or experience that you’d like to share, please post a comment. Thanks!