ON ALIENATION AND THE ESL STUDENTS

Laura Carey

Among the clutter of ads on the bulletin board in the neighborhood bookshop, I found a notice about a political organization I would have liked to have joined. Every month, people with whom I shared basic principles met to discuss their frustrations, grieves, and small triumphs and to bask in the luxury of common thought.

Next to that notice in the bookshop hung another, inviting women of all ages to infor­mal biweekly potluck suppers. I wanted to go. I hadn't seen any of my women friends or my mother or my sister for six months. I was an American alone in Barcelona. But every time I bought a new supply of books, I stared at those notices longingly and then headed home to my tiny piso to read. I knew that I should go to the meetings and the potluck suppers; I knew that I should make the most of my year in Spain. Attending such gather­ings would mean that I was at least trying to stave off my homesickness and the occasional bouts of loneliness by joining some of the groups whose addresses, meeting dates, and times I knew by heart.

But I just couldn't—or wouldn't. I felt uneasy about joining such groups. It was the language barrier—and probably the culture barrier, too, though I rarely admitted it even to myself. If these barriers loomedsolarge for me —an adult with a loving family and a modest bank account waiting back home—how formidable must they seem to the students in my English-as-a-second-language (ESL) classes in California? I've always known that their lives have been traumatic: escaping from war-torn Laos in the middle of the night or fleeing from screaming poverty in Mexico, only to meet with frustration and alienation in the promised land. I felt sympathy for these students, but I couldn't feel their feelings.

I still can't know what it is like to be a child wrenched from home and tossed into dangerous foreign waters. But I have been given a glimpse of life as an alien, and my heart hurts when I think of my students. They wouldn't want my sympathy, though. They are human beings, and, at 16 or 17 years of age, they are more adult and worldly than I; they would insist on their dignity.

I knew no Spanish when I arrived in Barcelona. As I had stated in my request for a leave of absence, I came to learn Spanish and to teach English as a foreign language, so that I could better serve my ESL students. I studied Spanish every day before work. I used it in the bread shop, in the butcher shop, in the taxi. I practiced on the portero in my building, and sometimes I asked my adult students to clarify some vague grammatical rule that I had just learned.

But I couldn't for the life of me picture myself in a social situation: the gawkyAmeri­can who says everything in the present tense, the woman with the vacant or puzzled look on her face, who can come, go, have, or be but can't walk, run, or laugh for lack of the appropriate verbs. What if they asked me a question? What if someone told a funny joke, and I didn't laugh? What if it were a racist joke, and I did laugh? And worst of all, what if I reached out to people, did my best to be warm and make a friend or two, and they turned away from me, embarrassed or impatient? What then?

It was much easier to be friendly with the other Americans that I met. Most of them were English teachers too, and we shared our daily experiences in the classroom. We discussed our students' progress, and we practiced rolling our r's together. We mourned the exchange rate for U.S. currency, we wondered about politics back home, and we remi­nisced about tortilla chips, bad coffee, and peanut butter.

Never again will I wonder why my ESL students segregatethemselves by nationality. I used to be baffled over the way they grouped themselves in the classroom: Mexicans on the right, Laotians on the left, Hmong in the middle. "But you're all in the same boat!" I would cry. "You should stick together." They would only smile, amused; I didn't know what I was talking about.

I learned quite a bit about language acquisition during the time I spent in Spain, far from the land of convenience, stores and fenced backyards. I was exposed to all sorts of materials for teaching English, and I discovered that the books and cassettes that personal­ize the material and tell a story are more effective than straight grammar, that drills are not as evil as I once thought, that role playing eventually eases anxiety, and that the daily lives of the students should be incorporated into every lesson plan. I filled notebooks with tips from other teachers, and I compared and contrasted bits and pieces of information from English, Irish, Scottish, and American teachers. But nothing has been more valuable to my life as a teacher than my own fear.

My fear—unfounded, silly, not terribly adult—made me long for the days when the vagar­ies of the copy machine posed my greatest frustrations. In California I could explain my flu symptoms to my doctor in complex linguistic structures: "Well, my stomach started to hurt the other day after dinner, although even at the dinner table I wasn't as hungry as usual, and the pain is low, almost abdominal." But in Spain I had a brief bout of something intestinal and, pointing at my stomach, I said to the doctor something like: "Me bad." In California I could call virtually anyone on the telephone, ask for instructions or directions, chat about personal or professional subjects, discuss prices, complain. In Spain a tele­phone call was a major event requiring several minutes with an English/Spanish dictionary and grammar book, a page of carefully drawn notes, and a pushup or two. I phrased my questions so that a simple yes or no would suffice as an answer, and a string of fast Spanish in reply would throw me into despair. But mine was the Caspar Milquetoast of despairs compared to what my ESL students must have endured.

I arrived in Spain by plane, after a movie and chicken cacciatore. Khammay crossed the Mekong River, her stomach empty, her little brother wiggling and crying under one arm. At the airport in Barcelona I caught a taxi; the smiling driver jabbered away while I repeated, "No entiendo." I don't understand. Khammay walked barefoot to a Thai refugee camp, where she was greeted by uniformed soldiers with rifles who leered at her and shouted at her mother, "Stay away from our food. Do not cause trouble."

I stayed in a pension room with a single gas burner for cooking and two hangers in the closet. Mai's family of seven shared a room with a dirt floor with two other families for their entire first year in Thailand. On some days they had no food at all.

While in Spain I took to reading in solitude for entertainment. Occasionally, I found a film in English with Spanish subtitles, and on those rare evenings I felt rich pleasure. Somsack found a cigarette in the refugee camp. He found it in the pocket of someone else's jacket. Somsack learned the value of stealing and the luxurious escape of nicotine.

Although I have brown eyes and brown hair, 1 didn't wear the black loafers and leather coat so typical of the modern young Barcelona woman that year. My hair was cut in an American style, and sometimes I felt a little conspicuous. People did look at me. They knew I wasn't native. But Juan, with his strikingly high cheekbones, baggy pants, slicked-back hair, and rusty girl's bicycle, which he pedals faithfully to school and then to work in the orchards every day, is so different from the others in the sophomore class that he has ceased to be conspicuous. He is mas guapo. In Mexico he would be the object of enor­mous yearning, but in California he is invisible. And that, I think, is worse.

My responsibility as an educator involves more than what is written in my contract. Every teacher knows this, and some even enter the field because of it. We are role mod­els—expected to exhibit good health and happiness, to show our students what a solid education did for us. "If you want to live the good life, follow my example." we say although not in so many words. But in Spain I saw myself becoming a hypocrite. My wealth and my security, even thousands of miles from home, were insulating me. When the next potluck supper was held, I brought an apple pie.