I have some skills I’m proud of and enjoy using whenever I can.
For example, I love to write, and I was part of the last class at my high school that learned to type on a manual typewriter.
Thanks to incessantly pounding inch-deep keystrokes on an old Remington to meet deadlines for my school newspaper when I was a teenager back in the early ‘80s, today my fingers fly like the wind across computer keyboards (and I use a lot less Wite-Out than I used to back in the day).
I’m also pretty good at cooking (my mother, who by her own admission was not, used to say I learned to cook in self-defense); and at home improvement tasks like painting, carpentry, tiling, electrical work, and even plumbing (all tasks my father avoided, for the same reason we didn’t want Mom near the Cuisinart).
Each of these life skills has at least two things in common:
- I started developing it at an early age, and
- I got a lot of practice before I felt like I could claim it as my own.
Now, if you need someone to rattle off a 1,500-word essay, whip up a nice dinner for six, or fix your broken ceiling fan, I’m your man.
After all, practice, as the saying goes, makes perfect.
Then there are some skills I’ve always admired in others but never practiced enough to get good at myself.
For example, I love music, have an enormous collection of CDs and Spotify playlists, and have even directed a few musicals for the theatre; but despite taking a semester of “Singing for the Stage” in college, learning to tap dance in a pair of cowboy boots for a production of Oklahoma, and starting piano lessons after I ended up with a baby grand piano when I was around 30 (the book for my class was actually, and somewhat embarrassingly, called “The Older Beginner Piano Course”), I still can’t carry a tune in a bucket.
I’m in awe of NECC Music Professor Alisa Bucchiere and my own daughter, Thomasina Glenn, brilliant, talented musicians who can play anything with keys, strings or reeds and sing like angels.
Similarly, while I took a few obligatory Spanish classes in junior high and high school; briefly tried learning German in my master’s degree program at Oklahoma State University while studying the works of Goethe, Schiller and Brecht; and dabbled in Greek when, as a young professor, I led a group of college students on a Mediterranean tour, I never got far past introducing myself and ordering breakfast in any of those languages.
But chances are pretty good that you know someone who got much farther along than me.
Around 20% of Americans speak two or more languages, with Spanish by far (more than 40 million people) the most common language other than English spoken at home, followed by Chinese (3 million), Tagalog (2 million), then Vietnamese, Arabic, French, Korean and Russian, each with more than a million speakers.
Decidi Estudiar Español
Here at Northern Essex Community College, Spanish is spoken about as commonly as English among many of our students and staff, and in the communities we serve, so a few years ago, just after turning 50, I set myself the goal of becoming conversationally bilingual, downloaded Duolingo, the world’s most popular language learning app, with nearly 50 million daily users, and got to work.
For the last 1,330 days in a row, I have spent between 15-30 minutes early each morning and just after dinner each evening learning Spanish vocabulary and grammar, practicing my reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills, and getting showered with encouragement, praise and prizes (and occasionally discouraged grunts or stern scowls) by the app’s colorful collection of cartoon characters, including its famous green owl mascot, Duo.
After more than three years in a row of daily practice, I can say with some confidence that I am able to:
- Read and understand more than half of a Spanish language newspaper
- Listen to podcasts recorded for Spanish language learners
- Have very basic conversations slowly
- Prepare in advance and read remarks in Spanish for public events like graduation ceremonies
True story: The last time I travelled to the Dominican Republic, I spent a couple of days with some colleagues from NECC hiking Pico Duarte, at just over 10,000 feet, the highest mountain in the Caribbean.
After reaching the peak, while some of our other hikers headed back down, I stayed behind a bit and descended with one of the mountain guides, a young woman from the nearby village of La Cienaga whose English was about as good as my Spanish.
With some patience, grace, and perhaps a sense of mischievousness, she humored me by carrying on a very basic conversation in Spanish about growing up near the mountain, the beauty of its national park, and how they care for the hikers (and the mules) that trek along the trails each day.
It was a pretty low-risk situation (the conversation anyway, if not the mountain hike), and while I’m sure I stumbled over some things I meant to say, I was proud of myself.
The list of what I am not able to do effectively in Spanish is much longer, and includes things like:
- Have a normal-paced conversation with a fluent Spanish speaker (especially about important topics)
- Read and understand anything more complicated than a newspaper, like an academic article or a novel
- Enjoy a movie in Spanish (without subtitles)
- Dance to a Bad Bunny song (OK, that one is more about my awkward dancing than my bilingualism)
Another true story:
Not long ago, I walked out of my office on NECC’s Lawrence campus, where nearly all of our students are Hispanic, mostly from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, and most are native Spanish speakers, into a lobby filled with students attending classes from Lawrence High School.
Myrna Percibal, who works in our Early College program, was sitting with a couple of students, deep in a conversation about classes and careers.
“Look!” Myrna exclaimed to the students, “It’s the president of the college. You should tell him what you want to do.”
“Sure!” I responded, always eager to talk with our students. I sat down and said, “Tell me about yourselves.”
One of the students, a young woman about fifteen years old, looked up at me a bit sheepishly, and started to form a response when Myrna jumped back in, “Wait, the president is learning Spanish. You should tell him about what you want to do in Spanish.”
I froze.
Immediately, I could feel my face flush and my palms begin to sweat.
These weren’t cartoon characters in Duolingo or a friendly mountain guide entertaining a client. These were real people with real questions, and I was the real president of the college who is supposed to know the answers to those questions and help them.
“Ummm,” I stammered, “Si. Gracias, Myrna. Que quieres estudiar?”
Suddenly, the young woman who only a moment ago seemed shy and hesitant leaped into action.
“Quiero ser enferma!” she confidently proclaimed, before launching into what felt to my untuned ears like an avalanche of Spanish crashing down around my head, with here and there an occasional word or phrase I understood.
She ended with, “Entonces, que debo hacer?”
“Lo siento,” I sheepishly said, “Puedes repetir eso mas lentamente por favor?”
That’s a helpful phrase I had found myself using a lot when suddenly tossed into conversational Spanish: “I’m sorry, can you please repeat that more slowly?”
Myrna smiled broadly and stepped in to save me before I inadvertently committed educational malpractice in a second language I barely understood.
The young woman dreamed of becoming a nurse, but was worried about how to pay for college, and her family thought it might be best to just get a certificate and get job as a phlebotomist or nursing assistant earning something more than minimum wage in a local hospital.
With Myrna’s help, shifting back and forth from English to Spanish, we explained to the student and her friend how she could complete half or more of her associate degree through her Early College program, and then continue at the college for free with financial aid from MassEducate.
Whew.
I mopped my sweaty forehead, thanked Myrna and the students, and headed for my next meeting, admiring what they were capable of that I, for all my experience and qualifications, was not.
As the cartoonist Bob Thaves once quipped in one of his “Frank and Ernest” strips, “Sure Fred Astaire was great, but don’t forget that Ginger Rogers did everything that he did…backwards and in high heels.”
I’m in awe of NECC educators like Naydeen González-De Jesús, Giselle Peguero, Solanyi Munoz,
Elizabeth Mercardo, Paula Pancorbo, Ilia Colon, Myrna Percibal, Arnaldo Reyes, and dozens of others at the college who do everything that the rest of us do—in two languages.
And I’m amazed by alumni like current trustees Zoila Gomez and Jouel Gomez, and former trustee Wendy Estrella who learned English and earned their first degrees at NECC and are now successful business and community leaders.
Learning a Language
What you’ve heard is true: It is easier to learn another language when you are young. A recent study by three Boston area universities, led by Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, concluded that, “The ability to learn a new language, at least grammatically, is strongest until the age of 18, after which there is a precipitous decline. To become completely fluent, however, learning should start before the age of 10.”
That doesn’t mean that bilingualism comes easy for all children.
Young English language learners (or “ELL’s”) can face socioeconomic, cultural, psychological, and environmental challenges like:
- Culture shock: Adapting to a new culture with unfamiliar social norms, traditions, and values can be overwhelming and can interfere with learning.
- Lack of English-speaking role models: English language learners often live in urban areas—Massachusetts Gateway Cities like Lawrence, Haverhill, Lowell, Chelsea, Holyoke, and New Bedford—with high concentrations of other immigrants, limiting their exposure to native English speakers. And in communities like Lawrence, which are overwhelmingly Spanish speaking, it can be easy to get by close to home entirely without English.
- Family dynamics: Younger family members may adapt to English and American culture faster, leading to potential tension with parents and other older relatives who may feel their language and culture is being shunned. Academically, some immigrant children are growing up in households where a language other than English is predominantly spoken, and they are becoming conversationally proficient in both languages, but not completely fluent with reading and writing either. On college campuses they are sometimes known as “Generation 1.5” students because they share characteristics of first and second generation immigrants, and have different learning needs.
- Fear of making mistakes: Many young (and older like me) language learners are hesitant to speak or write in their new language due to fear of embarrassment or being misunderstood. The pressure of navigating a new environment while learning a new language, fearful of making mistakes, can create anxiety, making it harder to focus and engage with the learning process.
- Underresourced schools: The urban areas where many immigrant ELL students live are often those where school resources—teachers, counselors, and academic support services—are stretched thin across hundreds or thousands of students, making it more challenging for new language learners to get the help they need.
- Difficulty understanding course materials: Students may struggle to comprehend content in other academic subjects if they are still developing their English skills, leading them to fall behind in subject matter classes.
- Parents unable to engage in school life: Parents with limited English proficiency may struggle to assist with homework or participate in school activities.
Little wonder, then, that, while actual outcomes vary by race, ethnicity, gender, and income, English language learners are less likely than native speakers to graduate from high school on time and much less likely to attend college.
Of course, Gateway Cities like Haverhill and Lawrence, where NECC has campuses, have high populations of immigrant residents that include adults learning English as well, and like me, they face some additional challenges.
AARP (formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons) acknowledges that learning a language when you are younger is typically easier, but cheerily suggests some tips for their demographic (generally, Americans older than 50) who are committed to trying, such as dedicating at least five hours a week to practicing, speaking it every chance you get and, if possible, living where it’s spoken all the time.
If I want to get better, I need to spend more time in the lobby with Myrna and the Early College students sweating it out, or go all the way, take a sabbatical, and spend a few months working at a college in the Dominican Republic (in some kind of job where the consequences of misconjugating “hacer” or “tener” are not dire).
For many people in the communities we serve, though, it can be challenging just to find a way to begin learning English.
According to a study by the MassINC Policy Center, about a tenth of the Massachusetts workforce, nearly half a million people, has limited English proficiency, yet it is not unusual in a city like Lawrence to have hundreds of people on waiting lists for ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) classes taught by public schools, colleges, and non-profit organizations with state and federal grant support.
On top of getting into a class in the first place, English language learners, particularly new immigrants, are often working in lower-skilled, low-wage jobs, even if they have educational credentials and experience from another country, so balancing work, family, and classes, along with transportation issues (buses and trains add hours to the workday) can turn learning English into a mountain taller and more daunting than Pico Duarte.
Supporting English Language Learners
Recommendations from the MassINC Policy Center and WestEd offer some practical, compelling ideas to solve these challenges, while benefitting English language learners, their families, and their communities.
From a public policy and funding perspective, we should:
- Increase state investment in ESOL instruction to meet the needs of Massachusetts’ growing immigrant population.
- Focus more ESOL instruction on vocational programs.
- Use community colleges to secure more federal funding for ESOL classes.
And from the perspective of educators on college campuses (and in K-12 or adult education classrooms in the community), we should:
- Improve alignment between ESOL and other classes.
- Incorporate more of our students’ lived experiences into coursework through student focus groups and peer-to-peer collaboration.
- Consider flexibility with time restrictions for classroom activities, homework, and exams.
- Reduce anxiety for English language learners by normalizing help-seeking activities (list support services in course syllabi, share your own stories of seeking assistance, team up with guest speakers and mentors).
Most of all, we should recognize that learning another language takes time and practice, and someone who is less fluent is not less smart or capable. Rather, like the rest of us, they are a work in progress, on their way to something important and wonderful.
In an increasingly multicultural society that, now more than ever needs ways of better understanding each other, bilingualism is a superpower, worthy of respect and admiration.
Hasta pronto. Necessito practicar mi Duolingo.
