Struggling With Language Barriers : ...

Jose Ornelas has a second job four nights a week after his restaurant duties in Old Town, a job that offers no money but pays him and those he works with in ways Ornelas considers far more important than a salary.

Ornelas volunteers to help teach basic reading and writing--the alphabet itself, in some cases--to Spanish-speaking residents of San Diego who are illiterate in their own language.

“It’s the hardest thing at first, to get them to (stay with it) when you show them ‘A, B, C, D’ for the first time and they forget,” Ornelas said. “But finally you see them start to read silently, you see the smiles on their faces, and that makes me feel good, too.”

Adult ESL teachers are finding more and more students in their courses who cannot read or write in Spanish, making the task of learning English even more daunting than it normally is for blue-collar adults trying to squeeze in study time at night.

As organized literacy groups scramble to raise money for programs to reach more of these adults, ad-hoc efforts by people such as Ornelas represent the best hope for encouraging them to persevere.

“My life has changed,” said Lourdes Cortez, one of the first students to sign up for the small class that Ornelas volunteered for. “I am writing now and I feel very, very different, much better for myself, because you get upset when you cannot read and always have to ask my sons or my daughters or my neighbors for help.”

Ornelas and Cortez were led to the night classes last year through advertisements placed in local Spanish-language newspapers by Judy Harper, a former San Diego Community Colleges ESL instructor who started up a literacy course on her own at the Julian Street school in Barrio Logan.

Harper, now a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said she was finding that 35% to 40% of all immigrants who qualified for amnesty and signed up for ESL classes had trouble grasping English because they were illiterate in their own language.

“Too often we (ESL teachers) assume the literacy in their native language when teaching,” Harper said in an interview. “My sense is that these students would be much more comfortable and stay with ESL if they could read and write in Spanish first.

“In addition, many of these students have had little or no experience with school at all and they need to find out that they can indeed learn, and learn quickly. You can see the progress with those who come consistently.”

A professor of sociolinguistics at the Stanford University Humanities Center said that a person’s knowledge of a native language, particularly if it uses a Roman alphabet, helps in the transition to studying English.

“It’s also much easier if you’re literate in your first language before learning English because then you only have to learn one skill at a time,” Ana Celia Zentella said.

Ornelas said that those students who stick with the classes, as difficult as they are at first, “want to learn, want to get better jobs, and want to be able to communicate with their families back in Mexico or Central America by writing letters.

“So often, there are intimate things you want to tell relatives, or your husband, but you won’t do that if you have to dictate a letter to someone; you’ll only tell if you can write it yourself.

“But many have so little time. They come directly from work to class.”

Manuel Zarate, a former school teacher in Michoacan state in Mexico, last year noticed the difficulty many parents of immigrant children at Balboa Elementary School in Southeast San Diego had in understanding notes and other information sent to them in Spanish.

Zarate, an instructional aide for Balboa students in ESL classes, began his own Spanish literacy classes for their parents after school--on his own time--with the support of Balboa Principal Margarita Carmona.

“It’s difficult because many parents do not have the time, and also they sometimes feel ashamed to admit they cannot” read or write in Spanish, Zarate said through an interpreter, although he himself is studying ESL at the community college and has gained some fluency.

“The most important thing is to motivate the parents,” Zarate said, pointing to the plays and music festivals he has coordinated at Balboa, in which he assigns parts both to parents and their children as a way to have them study together.

“In memorizing parts, I have them little by little learning to read, to understand” the written word, he said.

While Zarate has a stable group of 15 parents who show up regularly, as many as 40 parents have participated in his plays and festivals.

The Literacy Volunteers of America, San Diego chapter, has applied to the Irvine Foundation for a multi-year grant to help expand the ad-hoc programs in San Diego and in North County.

“We want to build on what Manuel and Judy and all the others have been doing, to expand upon the close-knit neighborhood work they have accomplished,” said Scott Cheney, executive director of the group.

“It would not only help build a stronger base for transitioning to English but would provide a cultural affirmation of the value of their own background.”

Both Cheney and Jose Cruz, who coordinates the San Diego County Literacy Network, said that those residents who have signed up for the existing small programs are only the tip of the iceberg. For every 100 students who might have participated already, there are 50 to 100 times as many who are not being served, Cheney said.

“Two years ago, you hardly heard about the problem of Spanish literacy,” Cruz said. “But once we started promoting a few things, we began getting a lot of calls. We know the demand is there.”