Many immigrants fear they won’t be able to speak or pronounce English well, or worse, that they won’t know the laws or rules of a new country. Many students strive to excel every day. The problems they face stem from wanting to study, but instead having to work to support themselves.I am a native Spanish speaker. I came from Guatemala two years ago. I will graduate this year, but I feel I’m not quite ready yet. My English hasn’t improved as much as I would have liked, but I have learned new things.
I believe it’s not just about having a diploma for convenience or compliance, but about having it and feeling proud of it for what you did or learned.
All the classes are very interesting, but you can’t learn if you can’t read or understand what they’re saying. It’s not that you’re stupid, because what you really don’t understand is the language. But during this time, I’ve observed that the obstacle is ourselves, because we believe we can’t. But I bet you know someone who learned a new language in a short time and you wonder how. That’s the same question I ask myself. So what should you do? Try a little harder. If you don’t do it, nobody will do it for you.
Do you think classes should be mixed—combining newcomers with the general student population?
I believe that native Spanish-speaking students don’t need to take advanced Spanish classes for native speakers. We should have the option of studying other languages or not having the same private lessons as the other students, because we would fall behind, and so would our teacher. I don’t know if it’s possible, or perhaps it already exists and I’m unaware of it, but it would be a good idea to have a grammar class for beginners to improve more in the other classes. I have an English class where my teacher had to adapt to our level, which wasn’t very good because the class she was supposed to teach was more advanced than our level. But really, it all depends on the student, on whether they want to learn or not.
Considering that 50% of learning depends on students actually learning, or at least trying to, but most classes are incomprehensible to some students because they don’t understand what they read or what the teacher expects in the assignment, and therefore, due to a lack of knowledge, we resort to the translator and do the homework out of obligation rather than to learn, I think that’s why beginner classes don’t work—because we don’t know how English grammar works.
To summarize, Mission High School needs to do a better job serving its newcomer students. It can do this by 1) offer a beginning English class instead of Spanish for native speakers.This is important so that newly arrived students can learn basic English to integrate into other classes or with other classmates and understand the classes or prepare them for after graduation.
