Pack Your Bags If You Want to Learn English
Kenneth Kowald’s editorial, “People in America need to learn how to speak English,” brings up immigrants’ levels of English and how their ability to be a part of society is affected by it. Long story short, their proficiencies aren’t very high. As citizens, they have all passed an English examination, yet, like the man in the editorial who claimed he wouldn’t be able to understand a court case, many can’t have a voice in the general society. But why is this? Are there not enough immigrants taking ESL classes? Are they not trying hard enough? Perhaps, they feel that learning English isn’t actually necessary to live in America?
Being born in the United States, I’ve never seen the citizenship test, but I have heard about it from others. I particularly remember one story my fifth grade history teacher shared about her family, and how they had to write a sentence in English to prove their proficiency. What sentence did they write? “I love America!” What sentence did everyone else in the room write? “I love America!” And with that, these people all passed the English portion. But let’s be honest. I doubt I could make my way around Paris only knowing how to say, “I love France!” and just the same way, many of these people really couldn’t communicate in English. This remains the case for many new immigrants today, who “prove” their “English know-how,” and then situate themselves in an ethnic neighborhood where everyone speaks their native language—never once needing to voice their, “I love America.” However, many of these people are forced to look for jobs outside of their familiar neighborhoods, places where English is the spoken language. What can these immigrants do to learn the language? Take ESL classes on the weekends and then return to their exclusively Polish-speaking neighborhood for the other 98% of the week?
Sadly, attempting to learn English this way will probably not increase any immigrant’s language proficiency very much or very time efficiently. Let’s look at one typical type of adult English learner, such as the hypothetical Polish speaker I brought up before. They will spend a few hours a week memorizing grammar rules and vocabulary, only having these few class hours to test out their spoken English. But for the rest of the time, they are only using Polish, and not exercising their English language knowledge. Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts to language learning, with daily practice being the only way to efficiently learn a new language. This is why the children of these immigrants always learn English fluently: They go to an English speaking school five days a week where everything is taught in English, and where many of their classmates speak English as well. This is great practice that many adult learners don’t get, simply because they have no one to talk to, especially like our Polish friend who lives in an immigrant Polish neighborhood. Being surrounded by people who share in your culture may feel comforting, and it is understandable why someone would want to live there, but it will only hinder language goals.
Kowald brought up the question of why the inability to read, write, and speak an advanced level of English is such a “handicap” in America. This is true even for immigrants “lucky” enough to find jobs in their ethnic neighborhoods. At some point in their lives, they will have to venture out of their neighborhood and interact with the large English speaking portion America, such as the man called for jury duty, who definitely wouldn’t be able to understand a court case, full of legal jargon, if all he knew were basic English phrases. There may be no official language in America, but English is the national Language, and a common lingua franca, or chosen language among people who do not speak the same native language. If immigrants decided to “pack their bags” and move into ethnically diverse towns, where they could experience constant interaction among English speakers, their language proficiencies would skyrocket (which is why that “lucky” man who found a job in his ethnic neighborhood may not be so lucky). In this way, immigrants would be headed to operating not in a small ethnic neighborhood, but in their diverse new home country. However, are we willing to sacrifice major hubs where people can experience other cultures, listen to other languages, and eat authentic ethnic cuisines, for the sake of spreading English and intermixing America? Would such things not be possible without those places, or with smaller-scale ones?
http://www.timesledger.com/stories/2013/15/kowald_we_2013_04_12_q.html
Aristotle once wrote: “’For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them”. In other words, one can never learn how to truly be proficient at any skill unless they go out and try and use that skill. The same notion applies to immigrants and learning the English language. Having experienced it personally with a friend’s mother, I saw how staying home to take care of her children, as a new immigrant into the United States, wasn’t improving her English. When she decided to find some extra income through Spanish lessons, her English suddenly improved tremendously; her accent was far from gone but her proficiency in the English language improved substantially. Ironically enough, teaching Spanish forced her to learn English and by the time she was eligible for a citizenship test, she was able to pass it without too much trouble. According to her though, the citizenship test consisted more of American history and knowing the pledge than demonstrating English proficiency. At first, when Kowald brought up the point about immigrants in the court room I agreed that the citizenship test should be a better test for English proficiency then it currently is because citizens should be able to hold civic responsibilities that rely on English. Thinking about it more though, I realized that such a task could have many more negative consequences than positive ones. Many immigrants rely on the citizen papers to help with travel, insurance, and government aid. To many immigrants these new benefits to citizenship outweigh the possible negative impacts of such cases in which they are unable to hold their civic responsibilities.
Odette, great blog post. I hope more classmates respond. Something neither you nor Nir have brought up, probably because you guys have not been faced with jury duty yet: people tell the judge all kinds of things to get out of jury duty. They pretend to be racist, mentally ill, say they believe in capital punishment for theft, etc – and that they don’t speak English. Alas, jury duty is not something most Americans, immigrant or not, happily embrace, unless they are retired and bored.
To become an American citizen, you have to pass an interview with an immigration officer. You are tested, verbally, on American history and civics, as well as your understanding, speaking, and written ability in the English language. The civics and history test is something failed by most Americans when they try it on non-immigrants. Exceptions are made for elderly people who have lived in this country for more than 20 years. They can bring an interpreter. They still have to know the civics and history, but not English.
This is a particularly interesting subject to me as well, as a student learning a language that I have no cultural or familial connection to. I appreciated your (Odette’s) analysis of the core issue in language learning, which is the prevalence of a certain language in a neighborhood dominated by that ethnic/cultural group. In my experience, and for other non-native speakers, it is not until one is completely immersed in an area that speaks the language one is learning for a significant period of time that one can actually move beyond proficiency and into fluency. In terms of the civil/political issue of responsibility to the judicial system, particularly given that the United States has no official language, it is an interesting challenge that non-English speakers are limited in the duties they are able to fulfill to the state, though as pointed out in a previous comment escaping jury duty is hardly uncommon in the United States. As Nir said, however, the value of obtaining citizenship is far greater than holding out to avoid being obligated to responsibilities you would be unable to complete, as described in the article, and the diversity that we have based on our somewhat more lenient citizenship tests is undoubtedly valuable to our city.
Another issue is that when immigrants don’t do jury duty, other immigrants are even less likely to have a trial by their peers. Which is the point of jury trials. Meaning that if you are an immigrant on trial, chances are that there are no immigrants on the jury that’s deciding whether or not your a guilty.
This issue seems to be a paradox to me. Is the suggestion that the immigrant should live in an English speaking neighborhood instead of an ethnic enclave? And is the suggestion that speaking English will increase your prospects for success? If this is the case then all the English speaking neighborhoods are generally out of reach for the immigrants. They chose to live in their ethnic enclave – at least at first – because this is where chain migration has brought them, this is where they are most comfortable, and this is what they can afford to do. In other words, where should immigrants bring their bags once they have packed them?
Those that can afford to live in the English speaking neighborhoods are probably living there – because it is a nicer community – whereas those who cannot, reside in their enclaves. It appears the system is geared for this divide. I would put this topic under a broader category of NIMBY or “not in my backyard”. It’s great that people want immigrants to speak English and become a productive member of society, it would just be better if this process didn’t happen in the already-affluent person’s neighborhood – not in their backyard.
So where are these immigrants expected to go? I suppose an ethnically diverse enclave would be better since it would force most to speak English but where are these ethnically diverse enclaves? I would think most of these enclaves occur naturally and if they occur naturally, they will probably be of only a few ethnicity.
I agree that there are no shortcuts to learning a language, especially one as devoid of systemic structure such as English, and I agree that surrounding yourself with English speakers is a worthwhile investment in your skill-set, but I find the solution to this problem to be problematic. Those who speak English are often willing to put the burden of learning the language on the immigrants without taking any of the responsibility themselves. Perhaps the solution to this issue is simply to talk to immigrants or volunteer your time at an ESL center. Or perhaps it is to reserve a limited number of spots in English speaking neighborhoods exclusively for immigrants, and at lower prices for a period of time so that the immigrants can assimilate into an English speaking community. But even this is asking an enormous amount of the immigrant whose assimilation process might just be better if they move into an ethnic enclave first, learning the ropes from their friends and family before eventually taking their skills to the next level.
If you want immigrants to speak English, the most obvious solution to me is to speak English with them, but this takes some of the burden away from the immigrants and puts it on the Natives, and it is my belief that many natives don’t want to be bothered by immigrants. It is much easier to say “Learn English” than it is to explain the English language.