Grossmont’s ESL classes provide path to higher learning, jobs

 

By Donald H. Harrison

 

EL CAJON, California – At Grossmont College, more than 40 full-time and part-time faculty members instruct some 700 students in English-As-A-Second-Language.  You might think of these ESL teachers as an American welcoming committee.  They are a generally kind-hearted cadre who help their students to navigate in English and thereby improve their chances of obtaining better employment either here in the United States or back at home.

Chuck Passentino, chairman of Grossmont’s ESL department, says the 700 students participating in the program this semester are divided almost equally into two categories: foreign students who will return to their countries after studying here, and immigrants or refugees who have been uprooted from their homes and now are trying to build life anew in the United States.

Both categories of students can benefit economically from acquiring English skills,  Passentino noted during a recent interview.  For an international student, earning a certificate as a competent English speaker and writer often can be the pathway for a better-paying job in the international arena.   For the immigrant student, English can be a stepping stone to higher education as well as to jobs in American businesses.

Accordingly, students learning English as a second language often go about their studies very seriously, while still having  fun in their classes.  Attending classes with peers—who also make mistakes while learning—can sometimes be a source of laughter,  enjoyment, and new friendships.

Passentino and ESL instructor Mimi Pollack have spent a lot of years at Grossmont College teaching and observing their students.  Pollack began teaching at the community college in 1989, and Passentino began in 1992. Additionally, both had extensive ESL experience before arriving at the Grossmont campus.

They report certain language difficulties among ESL learners depending on the students’ countries of origin.   For example, said Pollack, students from Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union tend to have difficulties with English articles – “the,” “an,” and “a” – because there are no articles in the Russian language.  So when Russian speakers write, particularly when translating in their heads from Russian to English, they often will produce sentences without articles.  For example, instead of saying “The boy patted the dog on the head,” they will be more likely to say “Boy patted dog on head.”

Those who come from the Middle East and speak such languages as Arabic will have different problems.  “They have a hell of a time with capitalization because there is no capitalization in Arabic,” said Passentino.  “So knowing when to put in a capital letter and when not to, can be difficult.”  Another problem for the native Arabic speaker, he said, is that Arabic does not include an equivalent for the verb “to be,” so knowing where to put such words as “is” and “are” into a sentence can be a challenge.

While students from Eastern Asia – Japan, Korea and Vietnam, for example – tend to come to the United States with a good working knowledge of written English, they struggle with pronunciation, Passentino and Pollack both noted.  This results from a combination of factors.  Some of the Asian languages utilize tones to differentiate meaning, whereas, in English, people stress certain words or syllables to convey the nuances of their meaning.  Many teachers in the Asian countries have learned English from books and don’t have sufficient experience speaking English to teach proper pronunciation.   As a result, said Pollack, some Asian students have particular difficulty understanding spoken English, or making themselves understood verbally.

Difficulties in learning second languages also occur in the opposite direction – when English speakers try to utilize their concepts, structures, or pronunciation in other languages.  I’ll never forget the time I tried to give a speech in Chinese on the occasion of my son’s marriage to a woman from Taiwan.  Although I practiced a short speech that had been transliterated for me, none of the wedding guests from my daughter-in-law’s country could understand very much of what I said — even though I had practiced what I thought was their language.  I simply couldn’t master the tones.   Recently, I asked Joseph Ball, an archaeologist at San Diego State University, about his studies of “Mayan” culture.  He was kind enough to explain to me that correctly it should be called “Maya” culture.  “Mayan” is the name of the language, whereas “Maya” is the adjective referring to the Maya people.   Why would I—and countless other English speakers—assume that the adjective was “Mayan”?  Perhaps it is because we incorrectly transport the concept from English, thinking a noun that ends in “a,” such as “America,” or “California,” will end with an “n” in its adjective form.  This may be true in English, but not in Mayan.

With approximately 700 ESL students, Grossmont has one of the biggest—if not the biggest—ESL programs at any of the local community colleges.  There are a variety of reasons for the large enrollment, said Passentino.  El Cajon has become a center of settlement for Iraqi refugees – both Muslims and Chaldean Catholics – and also has a fair share of immigrants from Mexico and Vietnam.  For these immigrants, Grossmont is the neighborhood college—the one most convenient for enrollment.

The college also has built a reputation among international students, many of whom commute to the school from other parts of the county.   There is a standard test known as the Test Of English as a Foreign Language, which is abbreviated as TOEFL.  The test was designed by the Educational Testing Service at Princeton University, the same group that designs the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) for high school students seeking to enter college.

If a student scores low on the TOEFL test, it is because his or her exposure to English has been minimal.  They are just starting out, in other words.   With its large, well-trained ESL faculty, Grossmont is willing to accept students with very low TOEFL scores – lower than some other colleges will accept – and then work with the students until they have achieved sufficient proficiency to take regular college courses.

This is mutually beneficial for the students and for the college.  English courses are typically five units, at a fee of $186 per unit.  That alone brings in $930 per student.  If there are approximately 350 international students taking at least five units, that suggests a potential of $325,500, and even more if students take more units.  These fees are pumped into Grossmont College’s coffers during  a time when the state is in a budget crisis.  It is not unfair to say that, in some cases, fees paid by foreign students help to subsidize courses that are offered to domestic students, who pay onl $26 per unit.

Pollack, born to a Chicago Jewish family that moved to Mexico City,  learned both English and Spanish as a child.  She studied at the French and American  schools in Mexico City.   Passentino, who originally studied at California Polytechnic College at Pomona to become a recreational park supervisor,  married a Colombian woman and subsequently studied Spanish while living  for two years in the city of Cali, Colombia.

Having themselves learned other languages, these two college teachers – as well as many others in the ESL department – possess a sense of empathy for their students.  They remember the difficulties they had, and the ways that they were able to overcome difficulties while they were learning a new language.

Learning English is more than a matter of grammar and vocabulary.  Hidden within languages are different concepts.  For example, said Passentino, whereas in English, people writing an essay will make a general statement and then give evidence of that statement with two or three specific examples, a Japanese or Korean speaker instead may utilize a completely different construct.  He or she may start with a broad generality, and then instead of providing specific support for that general statement, may go on to repeat the generality in different words.  “It’s a different type of rhetoric,” said Passentino, a rhetoric that seems strange to English ears.  Middle Easterners have a more circular kind of rhetoric whereas Spanish speakers tend to be more flowery, Pollack said.

Some immigrants who have been in this country for years may speak workable English, but their grammatical mistakes have become “fossilized,” and show up when they attempt to master more formalized written English, Pollack said.  For example, one Vietnamese woman who had been in the country for decades kept writing “gonna” instead of “going to.”  Higher level ESL classes can correct such “street English” and other mistakes, she said.

I had the opportunity recently to attend one of Pollack’s classes, which met one day from 9:30 to 11:45 a.m.  In the first half of the class, the students read paragraphs from a work book and then summarized the passages verbally in their own words.   In the second half, they learned the difference between active-voice sentences and passive-voice sentences.  In one exercise, they converted one voice to the other.  For example, “An ESL class was taught by Mimi Pollack,” is stated in passive voice.  To state it in active voice, one would say “Mimi Pollack taught an ESL class.”

Sometimes, Pollack moderates wide-ranging class discussions in English, comparing the customs of different countries.  In one class session, for example, her students discussed home-remedies in their countries for various maladies.  They learned that “fire cupping” to draw blood or infection through the skin is commonly practiced throughout various parts of the world.  On another day, the discussion centered on a misconception that some international students have about American families – that whereas in many foreign countries children do not leave home until after they are married, in America children are required to leave home when they are 18.   Not so, Pollack told her students. Although many Americans leave home to go to college at that age, it is not mandatory that they do so.  And, after college, many of those students will move back home!

Because ESL students typically see only each other in their classes, they often don’t get to interact with Americans other than their teachers.  The ESL teachers employ a variety of methods to encourage more interactions between ESL students and Americans.

For example, Pollack asks people she knows  to serve as pen pals for the students she teaches at night at the North City Center in Linda Vista, operated by the San Diego Community College District.  (Many part-time faculty members at Grossmont also teach at other institutions).   After I volunteered, I began corresponding by email with a Korean couple, a Brazilian couple, and a young Vietnamese man.  Besides exchanging written pleasantries, we arranged field trips to such venues as Cabrillo National Monument, Old Town San Diego State Park, and Julian.   And my wife and I have had the opportunity to host and be hosted for home-cooked meals.

Grossmont ESL Teacher Patricia Bennett has her students interview Americans about various topics and then write reports summarizing their findings.   For example, one student wanted to learn how much Americans really know about life in developing countries, while another was interested in why Americans seem to take longer vacations than do people from other parts of the world.

Passentino said he likes to bring “native speakers” to his ESL classes, so that students can practice speaking and listening to an American.  One enjoyable activity is “Mystery Guest” – similar to the old television program, What’s My Line – in which the students, by posing questions, try to develop a biography of the guest and learn what he or she does for a living.

Passentino said he would like to encourage Grossmont students and interested San Diego County residents to volunteer for such interactions by contacting him via email at chuck.passentino@gcccd.edu   Additionally, he noted, American students who would like to become friends with international students should consider joining the campus’s International Club, which promotes field trips and other joint activities for foreign and domestic students.

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World and a Media Communications instructor at Grossmont College.  He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com