Perseverance Among Immigrant Children

Children tend to have an easier time assimilating than their older counterparts; children are quickly “Americanized,” which can clash with expectations from their own culture. For example, an “Americanized” child may become embarrassed of wearing ethnic clothing once adapting to the designer clothing environment of American youth. Children also learn English at a faster pace than their parents, which taints the parent-child dynamic. Children with disrupted or minimal school education are suddenly thrown in a new educational environment. Various immigrant children struggle to keep up in class, due to different academic standards across different countries. A kid with a poor education may be overwhelmed with an American education, which has a reputation of being top-notched. Those who are unable to speak English, find it impossible to keep up with their peers, parents also may not have the education or language skills to assist their children. When my sister Mavis came to America from Ghana, she was in the 4th grade, she ended up having to repeat 4th grade because she knew almost no English and could only speak

Imagining journeying across the globe to better your life, this concept sounds familiar to many immigrant Americans. They all come across the globe to improve the lives of their families and themselves. Many people who move across the world are foreign to the language and culture. In many instances, their children are representing them. The children elaborate what the parents cannot. In Mother Tongue by Amy Tang, she writes the struggles her mother had been through while living in America. While she knew the language, her accent made speaking difficult to understand. Many people wrote her off without even attempting to understand her needs. When you’re an immigrant it is heartbreaking, seeing your parents struggle with the language while you

The teenage years and transition to adulthood is in itself a very difficult period. Blending or fitting in are omnipresent issues that must be dealt with. For children of immigrants, this difficulty is only intensified through language. Both Amy Tan and Khang Nguyen strategically use narrative anecdotes and employ several rhetorical devices to illustrate this struggle in their works, “Mother Tongue” and “The Happy Days,” respectfully. Amy Tan chooses her childhood home as the primary setting of her work. This allows her to focus primarily on her conversations and interactions with her mother. However, she also gives several anecdotes in which her mother’s background and improper English negatively affected her, outside the home. Through

One of the biggest challenge and hurdle immigrants face is the language barrier.In The Book Of Unknown Americans Alma encounters a situation where she gets lost and becomes desperate to go back home.Crying for help over the phone, but no reply. This makes her realize the importance of the English language,from that point she starts to carry a dictionary for help. Jobs could be another issue where language barrier may intervene.The Book of Unkonwn Americans demonstrates how harsh and crucial Arturo’s job conditions are.If the language barrier wasn't a factor, Aurtho could've had a job where the conditions were not as harsh. language is exposed everywhere, immigrants try to learn and familiarize with common phrases and words that may help them in the future and eventually overcome the language

→ Undocumented immigrants faced much kind of challenges among them; one of main difficulties arises from languages. For example difference between American slang and formal English. Likewise Jose Antonio describes in the video difference between “ what’s up? Where he replied “the sky”, if I were in his place I would have replied it as same way like he did. Also another challenged would be bullying by classmate they will make fun of your accent, if you have notice most immigrant kids won’t talk in front of the whole class because if they answer question asked by teacher they have to repeat several times so that teacher can understand fear of rejection, embarrassment and later bullying from you classmate outside of class. This why most immigrant

As I was having this conversation with my professor two people automatically came to mind, my older sister and my Academic Outreach Coordinator, Johanna. As time passed, I began becoming more aware of the struggles immigrants go through, from group talks we would have in our hall. Everyone in my hall would share a story they had and all of the stories had to do with immigration. I started noticing that in every story there was many similarities, such as our family crossing in a car or through the desert. Johanna would usually be the one facilitating these talks and she would do a wonderful job with explaining many things and even sharing her story. I was always very curious about knowing her story more in depth because I believe it 's commendable for immigrants to overcome many obstacles.

When the immigrant’s native language is not one of the general population, certain difficulties arise. For immigrants to be functional in society, it is highly important for them find a way to communicate with the culture around them. One way of doing this is learning the language of those in the surrounding culture. If immigrants decide to not go through the trouble of learning a new language, they often find that when they apply for jobs employers are, “discouraged by the fact that [they know] hardly a word of English” (Fox

There are kids that struggle in school because they don’t English and the other kids would make fun of them. Teachers should help the immigrant students to speak English. Children of immigrant think they have to act white just to be accepted. People need to learn English and need to have a High School diploma to get a great job to get good amount of money and be accepted by white people. Children of immigrants often feel they must lose their identity because they would have to adapt to a new culture and will lose their language.

Education is one of the best ways to help immigrants to assimilate to their new country; in way that the faster they can learn the ways of the new country, the faster they can become a part of it. An immigrant’s children, if they even have any, need to be able to speak and read in English in order to attend classes and learn the material, as well as making friends. According to the Robert Wood Foundation, most immigrants would say that their lacks of English related skills are a major barrier to improving their life or social standards. Most school systems have what they call ESL classes, English

According to “Bilingual education in the United States: an historical overview and examination” What most migrants will experience one they enter a new country is a form of submersion, but this is not a formal education of the language it is more of a way to understand the basics of communication. While this is what most adult migrants settle for, when the children enter school they are given different types of learning methods that have been shown to catch migrant children up to native children within 4 to 8 years. One such methods is the early exit method which teaches English to the student first in English then again in the child’s native language. This process of teaching migrants to speak English is one of the best ways to overcome their bigger obstacle of a language barrier with the nation they are

An astounding twenty-five percent of children in the United States are born of at least one foreign-born parent; eighty-eight percent of those children are second generation (Zong). Second generation immigrants typically acquire the language spoken in the receiving country (the L2 language) when old enough to leave the household for schooling. By contrast, first-generation immigrants who emigrate in adulthood often neglect to learn the L2 language, relying instead upon residential ethnic concentrations and the language-brokering of their children to get by. The lingual disparity between parent and child causes a cultural rift within the relationship, thereby stressing it.

The immigrants in “Immigrant Kids” had the hardest challenge to overcome in getting to America. They did this by being courageous, resilient, and smart. To begin, you need courage to leave your homeland. “Immigrant Kids” talks about how Ellis Island was named heartbreak island by the immigrants. If Ellis Island was named heartbreak Island by the immigrants, then the inspections were very hard to pass because it broke your heart if you got sent back home. If you know inspections are tough, then you have to have courage to leave your family and to try to get passed it. Next, resilience is very important while you are on the boat heading to America. The text talks about how immigrants were packed close to each other in rooms with bunk bed three

In Antonio’s home Spanish was favored over English, making it “a foreign tongue” to Antonio who could only hear “strange sounds,” instead of actual words (Anaya 57, 58). Apart from the language barrier, others were not especially welcoming of Antonio’s diversity. Antonio took out his lunch, which consisted of foods he often enjoyed at home, and “when the other children saw [his] lunch they laughed and pointed,” which further widened the gap between Antonio and his classmates (Anaya 58). The strange new world filled with odd people upset Antonio because he “did not understand them” and he felt as though he “was an outcast” in his class (Anaya 58, 59). However, Antonio did find some comfort in finding others who were going through a similar struggle. They formed a group “and in [their] union found strength,” as they no longer felt so alone (Anaya 59). Likewise, immigrants often feel alienated in a new society. Similar to Antonio, many immigrants face language barriers and unwelcoming people. In addition, immigrants “[find] it difficult to connect” because of the diversity of the cultures (Semuels). An immigrant describes life “’like [living] in a parallel world’” because of the separation felt between the things occurring in one’s life and the things taking place in the society (Semuels). Both Antonio and immigrants in our world often feel out of place in new

Some immigrants have trouble adapting to a new lifestyle because of limited resources. Yet, other immigrants who did not have much of a difficult time were able to integrate Spanish into a new society. For instance, Areli Martinez, a Mexican immigrant studying Psychology at UCLA, moved to the U.S. with her family in pursuit of better quality of life did not experience much difficulty in adjusting. From an email interview (see email interview above), she mentions her experiences as a Spanish speaker in California. Although it was not difficult for Martinez to adjust, her implications included language barriers and weak cultural values (see email response below). Due to language barriers and lack of cultural values, Martinez struggled with grammar and placing her thoughts on paper when she was younger, but she was later able to persevere in learning English from cultural diversity and freedom to create her own values. Further, she also realizes that importance of Spanish in both the U.S. and Mexico (Martinez). With regards to the historical roots of Spanish, the Western hemisphere have benefited from the monopolization of this language because it brings cultural and linguistic ties from a global perspective. Through Spanish, immigrants obtain a sense of identity in a heterogeneous nation and benefit from it as an emerging

The language barrier exemplifies the idea of a disconnect between their two cultures, and the American Dream is proved to be a harsher reality than imagined. For millions of immigrants, the United States promises a fresh start, away from the troubles of their cultural home. But for many, assimilation proves difficult, isolating many from both their communities, leaving them in a world separate from the one they left, but not fully in the one they hope to join. Works Cited Henrickson, Shu-Huei. "