Welfare – yeah, that’s the ticket. Your post is funny, but there is a whole lot of truth in it. The following article is very timely and supports the knowledge that welfare is an open secret. Immigrants, legal or illegal, need ...no English language skills at all, and no interest in anything American beyond how to get welfare once in the U.S....
English as a Second Language as ETC
By Linda Grace Cariño
Sun Star, June 30, 2002
I HAD recent occasion to talk shop with someone about English as a Second Language (ESL). We discussed what I called a "competency-based" ESL, as taught for particular situations, i.e., the American cultural context - he calls it ESP, English for Special Purposes.
Whatever acronyms we give versions of this subject matter, it is clear that its popularity and the proliferation of various kinds of centers, schools, etc... that offer it in the world indicate a huge demand for English language instruction.
In terms of educational paradigms, one wonders, given such a multicultural world as ours, what learning guideposts should be considered when teaching it.
When the U.S. State Department ran an ESL program in the Philippines for U.S.-bound refugees from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia back in the 80s-90s, they did so with particular competencies in focus.
Since the refugees were going to the U.S. to live, they needed to be prepared to speak the language (what might be called EAE, English as American English). Just as significantly, however, they needed the English for situations most migrants to the U.S. face, like finding a place to live, securing gainful employment, how to use a telephone, read a map, and so on.
Naturally then, they needed to be instructed and exposed to the American cultural context.
As one who did a good number of years with the agency subcontracted by the U.S. State Department to deliver the above to said refugees, I found myself in academically exciting endeavors: actual classroom instruction with peoples from different cultures, curriculum and materials development, and teacher training.
It was an exciting five years. One of the more memorable experiences I had during that stint was to be for a week in a class that had what was essentially the once Cabinet of Vietnam.
It had four (five?) ex-ministers, one of the water system, one of the roads, I think, and several more in a class that had yet others from Vietnam's societal elite. Yes. We got a lot of those. They already spoke English. As a matter of fact, most of them spoke French even more fluently. A number had frequented the U.S., even, before the so-called fall of Saigon.
The translator/assistant teacher for this class was a medical doctor, older and surely wiser than I was then.
There wasn't much to "teach" them - so we had these deep discussions on American history, policy, and foreign relations. Oh yes.
Of course, there were such classes. But there were also those on the other end of the spectrum, folk who had far less sophisticated pasts, no English language skills at all, and no interest in anything American beyond how to get welfare once in the U.S. And then there were all those populations in between.
Depending on their "profiles," lessons were developed for them, all geared, of course, to the objective of successful resettlement in the land of milk and honey.
It didn't hurt, of course, if they absorbed American idiom on the way.
As an educator, by far the most valuable insight I took away from that whole experience was that everything, including language teaching, must be viewed from a cultural perspective, in design and implementation, especially. The cultural perspective guideposts must serve curriculum, those who use them, and those who receive the instruction.
What it all boils down to, in truth, is text and context, and English instruction in the world today must be that: English as Text and/in Context, or ETC. |
