Immigrants Learn the Write Stuff at UC’s ESL Classes

Ken Chieh is a June honors graduate from South Torrance High School near Los Angeles. Dung Huynh graduated in June on an advanced academic track from Clairemont High School in San Diego.

But at the same time that they and some 80 other UC San Diego freshmen--almost all first-generation Indochinese- and other Asian-Americans--are tackling high-level engineering and science subjects, these students are also enrolled in English-as-a-second-language courses, or ESL, to raise their writing skills to acceptable levels for college.

The irony is that, unlike most limited-English students who have trouble succeeding in school, these students easily qualify for regular UC admission despite the system’s rigorous requirements.

From only a handful of students a few years ago, the numbers of students in special ESL composition classes have increased across the UC system, administrators say, an indication of the much greater difficulty that non-native English speakers face in learning to hone literary and grammar skills, as compared to conversation.

These students show such poor English writing skills that when tested in composition by UC campuses, they cannot be placed in one of the regular freshman writing programs.

“These students need advanced language work because there are fundamental problems of writing here,” said history professor Stanley Chodorow, dean of UCSD’s division of arts and humanities. “They have a very hard time expressing themselves, in understanding (course) readings at a sufficient depth to read and write with the sophistication necessary for college work.”

Tracy Terrell, a UCSD professor of linguistics who first taught the ESL courses several years ago, said the problem “is not one of intellectual deficiency” but results both from the difficulty in learning English, in particular written English, and the students’ preference for math and science, which offer fewer linguistic pitfalls.

Terrell cited research showing that 15 years or more of progressive English study might be required for complete fluency in all aspects of the language.

Margaret Loken, the program’s director, said the lack of preparation also raises questions about whether high schools are requiring enough expository writing and about how they evaluate the performance of students for whom English is a second language.

All expressed strong support for the ESL courses despite what Chodorow said are the private views of some faculty members that the university should not be involved in such basic language instruction.

“Some ask whether a student should come to the University of California before being adequately trained in English,” Chodorow said. But Chodorow and others point out that these same students show potential for brilliance in science or engineering, and say that they should not be penalized for what Chodorow called “a cultural problem.”

For that reason, Chodorow believes the University of California was right in successfully opposing a proposal by the College Board last month to include an essay as part of its Scholastic Aptitude Test, or SAT, used by colleges nationwide as part of the admissions decision process. “That could have served as a gatekeeper” to keep such students from admission, Chodorow said.

The ability to write cogently in English about literary and philosophical ideas--many of them Western concepts--is much more difficult than working with math or science, “which are much more universal,” Chodorow said.

Even one-fifth of native English speakers admitted to UCSD must take a special UC writing course known as Subject A, Chodorow pointed out.

Most of the ESL-enrolled students recognize their need for the course, even though the ESL designator title conjures memories of their first days in the United States and their first English courses in elementary or secondary school.

“It’s very helpful,” said Chieh, a native of Taiwan who came to the United States six years ago. “The requirements for (graduating) out of ESL in high school are much, much easier than they should be. I was only in ESL half a quarter in high school, and then passed out into regular English at the 9th grade.”

Added Chieh, a mechanical engineering major, “I’m having a hard time here right now because I don’t have the training in writing that I should have had in high school. I should have been (forced) to write more.”

The other day, both Chieh and Huynh, a biochemistry major, were working on tenses and sentence structure in revising essays they had written for Loken’s ESL workshop.

“I was surprised “ that I was placed in the ESL class, Huynh admitted, since he had taken advanced English classes at Clairemont High. “But high school did not prepare me enough with verb tenses, and I think the writing there was more for structure and content than for grammar. I found out (here) that I don’t use verb tenses well, but this class is helping me a lot to be better with grammar and to write more complete sentences.

“High school (classes) were a joke compared with this.”

Loken and her colleagues find that the students’ weaknesses vary widely, with some needing extensive drill in the correct use of clauses and tenses, while others need to work on analytical writing. Many appear to have practiced narrative and first-person writing extensively in high school, but had little instruction in how to write analyses or essays based on close readings of texts.

“The class is an effort to give these students more confidence in reading and in responding to an essay in their own writing, to be able to discuss something they have read, and to write about it as a result,” said Loken, a specialist in ESL instruction.

After two or three quarters in ESL, the students move on to the Subject A writing class. Almost all successfully complete the sequence, administrators said.

“Most of our students have been in the U.S. anywhere from 8 to 12 years, but their instructors have not been rigorous, in drumming in attention to detail in grammar and syntax.

“Also, while many of our students speak English as a first language, they also know a second language (of their parents), and their parents may speak English poorly or not at all. The students may speak the native language at home and do very little reading outside of school, so they don’t have (English) reinforcement.”

ESL instructor Wanda Van Dusen said the students work extremely hard in the class.

“They almost always do their homework, they are exceptionally well-motivated, in part because they know that while in ESL they cannot take another course in their major or toward their degree,” Van Dusen said.

Loken said that for a few students, placement in ESL is “quite a blow for self-esteem, so we try to show that learning to write is a long process.

“I feel for them, because they are in a paradox of knowing that they need to spend more time to master these skills but feeling that their other courses are much more important.”

Chemistry Professor Tom Bond, the provost at Revelle College--one of five units at UCSD--said that the students need to be better convinced during high school that good reading and writing skills will help them later in life, even in the math or science careers that the great majority will pursue.

“We know they won’t write a lot, but they have to understand that even an electrical engineering major is going to have some essay exams, and do writing in labs, and be required to express himself when out in the real world.

“And I think this is an important task for the university, to give these students a quality program.”