What It Means to Live as an Adult Immigrant in the U.S.

What It Means to Live as an Adult Immigrant in the U.S.

                                                            by Jean J. Lee

 

The face of demography in North America has been dramatically changing as millions of refugees and legal immigrants have found their way into the U.S. and Canada. Although these people who have come to someone else’s countries started their new life in pursuit of freedom and the American dream, they are imposed multifaced burdens or challenges upon them. These social situations and contexts interact with one another affecting the adult immigrants’ learning of second language (or so-called the “target language”), which is English. As pointed out by scholars like Adkins and Sample almost 30 years ago, English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instructors are considered one of the first people available to help refugees and other immigrants survive a new cultural and linguistic environment.

Personally, I have a lot of relatives who immigrated to the States longer than a half century ago. They have faced various types of problems that affected their language acquisition to a great degree. Those problems should be seriously taken into account when researchers and educators attempt to come up with effective ways to promote the adult immigrants’ language learning in the ESL classroom, because the problems facing them will provide a basis on which successful instructional designing in the ESL classroom would be established.

Back when I was in the M.A.TESOL program in California, I conducted a semi-structured interview survey for empirical evidence for my paper. The interview was conducted with a group of adult immigrant parents in two elementary school sites in California. Through the interviews, I came to learn that people from some Asian countries such as Korea, China, or Japan are educated both at home and school in a way that attempts to make them moderate by keeping silent rather than to speak up all the time even when they have things to say or demonstrate. Therefore, those adult immigrants’ silence in the classroom often caused ESL teachers to misunderstand their students believing that they lack knowledge and motivation. Quite a lot of them were even viewed as illiterate just because only English literacy counted in the classroom. Differences in culture and code of conduct would cause inappropriate judgments of immigrants in the ESL classroom. Due to this kind of misunderstandings, the adult immigrants would be discouraged to speak up or inhibited from letting their voice heard eve in the instructional setting for language learning. In addition, most of the immigrant parents mentioned their beliefs about the change of self-image or identity in the U.S., which had been in the way blocking their language learning and, as a result, making them stay mute.

The diverse needs that adult immigrants bring into the ESL classroom can serve as a vital foundation for instructors to create a safe and supportive learning environment. This, in turn, can contribute to a more positive future for societies in the U.S. and Canada that are home to millions of immigrants. Today, there is growing concern and frustration over the harmful actions of certain political leaders and their mistreatment of immigrants in what was once known as the land of opportunity. Promoting individual self-worth, dignity, and respect should be a central goal not only for ESL educators, but for society as a whole.