Running the program
Strained budgets The English Language Institute offers 14 ESL classes. There are three beginning, four intermediate and five advanced intermediate classes at Douglass, plus two off-site classes. Growing demand led the institute to begin offering the third class for beginners in November. John McClure, coordinator of adult education and literacy at Douglass, said word-of-mouth advertising and a greater number of refugees from countries such as Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi are partly responsible for the larger student population. “We’ve seen in this year a larger influx of refugees than we’ve ever had before,” McClure said. “Those folks need to get into English classes as soon as possible.” McClure also said that an MU fellowship program brings a lot of Koreans to Columbia and that they are a large part of ESL’s student population. “A lot of those folks are spouses of fellows who are here for five years,” McClure said. “They are often well educated, they are able to speak, but they might not be able to write well or read well.” In January, seven months into fiscal 2008, the ESL student body stood at 474 compared to 420 for all of fiscal 2007. There are five students on the ESL waiting list. Twenty who had been forced last year to wait for available slots began classes in January. While the number of students has increased, the budget has not. It stands at about $300,000 per year for both the ESL and general equivalency diploma or GED programs. That number has remained the same for the past three years. About half of the students enrolled in a new afternoon class for beginning ESL students are from Burundi, a central African country sandwiched between Rwanda and Tanzania and east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Audra Jenkins teaches the class, which was added to the schedule in November. Dan Murphy, an ESL instructor for the institute and the education civics coordinator for Refugee and Immigration Services, said the conflicts have forced many African people, including many from Burundi, to spend as many as 10 years in refugee camps in Tanzania and Kenya. In the past year, about 40 of the 70 refugees who have come to Columbia from Africa have been from Burundi. Murphy described the arrival of refugees as occurring in waves. Six years ago, for example, the majority of refugees coming here were from Bosnia, but now many are from Africa. The local center uses federal money and other grants to help refugees get settled by getting apartments, finding jobs, learning to drive, paying for child care and obtaining green cards, which is a photo ID that shows that an immigrant is a permanent resident of the United States. Refugees are supposed to get jobs within three months, but Murphy said the center sometimes is unable to reach that goal because some refugees know little or no English before they arrive. Refugees are required to sign agreements with Refugee and Immigration Services that require them to attend ESL classes in exchange for help with rent and job placement. “Most refugees see the need to learn English, so even though we have an agreement that they will go to school in exchange for initial resettlement aid, this is rarely an issue,” Murphy said. Challenges in teaching Based on Jenkins’ experience working with refugees from Burundi and other countries, such as Cuba, Pakistan, Tanzania, Italy and Ukraine, she said their different education levels make teaching them a challenge. Some students were quiet during the first few days of the new class because they lacked the language to say “I don’t understand.” She tried to teach that quickly. “Some of them are actually illiterate in their own language,” Jenkins said. “… Sometimes when your vocabulary and your English ability are limited, your personality is limited as well. You can’t be as garrulous or talkative as you would normally be.” During one class, Jenkins started by writing, “Good morning. Today is Monday, December 3. It is cold outside. Brrr!” She starts every class by writing a simple sentence on the board. “This is sometimes what we say when it is cold. Brrr!” she said about the Dec. 3 prompt. As she uttered the word, she brought her arms together, wrapping them around her body as if she were cold. Later in the class, the students completed an exercise from their “Going Places” books, which Jenkins uses to teach students about first and last names, addresses and ages. “I try to teach them things they are going to encounter right away,” Jenkins said. “That’s all information they are going to have to produce for someone for a job interview.” Two of the biggest challenges in teaching a beginning class — instead of the class Jenkins teaches for Hispanic employees at The Bluffs retirement community — is that students are at different levels and that they can’t take books home to practice because other classes need them. Jenkins tries to make her students comfortable by asking about their own cultures and languages. At the Dec. 3 class, she sneezed, then asked students what they say in their language when someone sneezes. “It gives them a chance to say something confidently,” Jenkins said. “It shows them I have more difficulty with their language than they do with mine.” Getting into the flow ESL classes have been offered in Columbia for 30 years for people with varying needs, from those who have had no experience with English to students preparing for the Test of English as a Foreign Language, which international students must take to get into college. Most students are older than 18, but people as young as 16 can attend with permission from their principals and guidance counselors. The classes are free except to those who are in Columbia only temporarily. They have to pay a $96 testing fee. Every 12 weeks, students take a proficiency test through Comprehensive Adult System Testing that measures their listening and reading abilities. They are rated from A to D. Scores are used to place the students in classes that match their abilities. Lower-level reading tests often give students a picture, such as an image of a cookie, and ask them to match it with the corresponding word. More advanced tests require them to read passages and answer questions about them. Students in advanced classes are highly proficient in speaking and reading and have a solid understanding of basic vocabulary and sentence construction. Siebeneck, the director of the institute, likes to put students in his intermediate/advanced class in groups of two or three to talk to one another. He tries to get them talking and using English during 75 percent of the class time. “We do a lot of group work here,” Siebeneck said. “That’s what gets the English flowing.” During one December class, Siebeneck had students work together in pairs to come up with people, events and things involved in a traditional wedding ceremony. He also likes to bring in ads or have students listen to National Public Radio before asking them for their views on the ideas presented. Some students use electronic dictionaries to help with translations. “It’s all about language production, giving real-life situations to the student that are interesting and relevant,” Siebeneck said. More than half the students in Siebeneck’s advanced class are from Korea, and many of them are students preparing to take the TOEFL so they can enroll at MU. Siebeneck partly attributes the large population of Koreans in the ESL program to the recruiting efforts of Kim Sang, director of the Asian Affairs Center at MU. “I understand that he’s been instrumental in bringing lots of Korean nationals here to study at the University of Missouri. … That has really fostered a large Korean population,” Siebeneck said. |
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