Oral Exercise : Immigrants Find That Learning English Reflects the Struggles of Their New Lives

On a recent night in Room 508 at Van Nuys Adult School, a shoemaker from Mexico and a silk-screen operator from Mexico debated, in English, a proposal for class T-shirts.

The proposal came from the ebullient Nicolas Guzman, who offered to make the shirts for his classmates at the silk-screen shop where he works. His suggested slogan for the Level 3 English as a Second Language class: “The Heroic Class of Room 508.”

Armando Gomez, a 36-year-old shoemaker who bicycles to class from his job at a clothing store, had a different concept in mind.

“Listen,” Gomez said, gesturing expansively. “A picture of big eagle, and it says: ‘Learn or Die!’ ”

Both got laughs. Both slogans, despite their exaggerated tone, express the attitudes and struggles of the students in Room 508 as they move into the second half of the five-month semester.

The students are getting to know each other, gaining confidence and vocabulary. In conversations and in simply worded but sometimes powerful writing assignments, it became increasingly clear in the past few weeks that many have fought battles, sometimes literally, to get here.

“My cousin is dead,” Efraim Hernandez wrote in a composition describing his native El Salvador. “The communist guys kill like animals. I was in the Army. Almost, they chop my leg. . . . I will not go back.”

The battles continue. The new adversaries are the English language, loneliness, street crime, disillusionment, low wages, harsh living conditions.

The students were energetic and hopeful when they assessed their lives. But even some who arrived years ago said they are still adjusting to the frustrations and dangers of life in Los Angeles.

“Sometimes I feel sorry for some of my friends,” wrote Hilda Hernandez (no relation to Efraim). “To see so many people living in an apartment, sometimes there are as much as seven or eight people living in a single apartment.”

The pressures of immigrant life have reduced the size of the class, which meets Monday through Thursday from 7 to 9:30 p.m. About a dozen of the original 40 students have stopped coming, some replaced by new arrivals after spring vacation in April.

The no-shows include most of a small contingent of Soviet Jewish and Armenian professionals, including 28-year-old economist Yeva Shabsis, who now studies computer accounting at night. Several young Latino men with outdoor jobs dropped out because they work later as the days grow longer.

Others persevere. Among them is Zorel Fodoreanu, a Romanian political refugee and chemist. He works 14-hour days in his handyman business, and he sometimes arrives after the 8:15 break, grinning sheepishly.

“How many times I want to quit the school,” Fodoreanu said in an interview. “Because I was tired. But in the middle of us students is a wonderful teacher. . . . I think so for many others in the class. I see them: paint in their hair, like me. Sleepy. But they are there.”

The teacher, Andrea Beard, said this group is particularly serious and dedicated.

“They get the idea,” Beard said. “The trust factor is there. They are opening up. They are more confident.”

The 42-year-old Fodoreanu has changed since February. He has quit smoking. His haircut and clothes are new and youthful. He has gone to Las Vegas, which after the gray life behind the Iron Curtain he compares to a trip to the 21st Century.

“I realized that life is very nice in freedom,” he said. “I bought for me the first time new clothes in the United States Friday. Maybe I think this begins the true life. For me, everything here was provisional. . . . I begin to feel like an American.”

But Fodoreanu, an applicant for political asylum, remains anguished over his wife and two sons in Romania. He has not seen them since he left more than a year ago. To his dismay, he received word last week that the U.S. Consulate in Romania canceled visas which had earlier been approved and had put his family on a waiting list for permission to leave the country.

The officials said the visas should not have been issued because he is not a permanent U.S. resident and does not have political asylum, Fodoreanu said. He is trying to investigate the matter.

“I am sick in my soul because of this,” he said.

Fodoreanu hopes that within the next two months he will finally receive a date for an interview with the Immigration and Naturalization Service on his application for political asylum. If it is approved, that could give him a new way of reuniting his family. If the INS rejects the asylum application, he is not sure what he will do.

Twice a month, Fodoreanu talks to his family by phone. He explained proudly that his teen-age son won a trophy last month in a national music competition.

“They are growing up,” he said. “They ask me things, what they should do. One said he has a girlfriend. Now is the time when they need a father.”

Another student who remains dedicated to the class is Young Song, a Korean of 53 who wears spectacles low on his nose and has been in the United States since 1988. He is the only Asian in the class, and his manner was reserved at first. He speaks more often now. He is easier to understand. He explains that he grew up seeing subtitled American movies because his parents owned a movie theater in Korea.

“Julie Andrews,” he said. “Doris Day. Ben-Hur. Charlton Heston. I see many movies.”

Song, who once owned a business in Korea, worked at a cleaning service in Los Angeles but lost the job when he made a return trip to Korea a year ago. Since then he has not found work.

“They tell me, ‘You too old,’ ” he said. “ ‘You don’t speak English.’ ”

Song sits in the second row in the middle of the room each night. Most students also tend toward regular seats. Jose Antonio Mendoza, a 19-year-old gardener with the resonant voice of a born public speaker, prefers to stand and pace at the back of the room, textbook in hand.

Joaquin Ortiz and Jesus Roy Cortez of Mexico, who work at the same microfilm company and rarely miss class, sit in the front row next to long-haired Herasahan Kader of Bangladesh, a housewife. It helps to work with someone who does not speak Spanish, they say.

The class atmosphere remains generally amiable, though one student thinks a Mexican is hostile toward Central Americans, and a few women say they have been annoyed by unwanted flirtations--”all of them are respectful,” one said.

The classes present an agreeable social opportunity for a hard-working group. But some older students say socializing has its drawbacks.

“Many times if you have a friendship, it makes you relax instead of paying attention,” said Gomez, the shoemaker. He was interviewed in Spanish, as were the other Spanish speakers.

Gomez had decided he needs to buy a car. He budgeted $500 and is trying to save money from the minimum-wage job with which he supports a wife and three children.

The nighttime trek by bicycle from work to school to home is time-consuming and occasionally dangerous, he said. Once he lost a wheel in the overpass on Van Nuys Boulevard, took a spill and rolled out of the way of a car that plowed into the loose bike wheel and never even paused. He walked to class, scraped and angry.

“It made me mad,” he said. “It gave me courage. You would think he would have slowed down to see what happened.”

A different kind of street peril troubles Zoraida Guerrero, a 33-year-old Nicaraguan mother of three and a supervisor in a garment factory. Guerrero, who is separated from her husband, has an almost ferocious concern for her children’s education. She measures her progress in class by her increasing ability to help her 9-year-old daughter with her homework and to read the English parts of bilingual notices the girl brings home from school.

This summer, Guerrero’s 5-year-old daughter will start school. Guerrero worries because the school is run-down and located in a neighborhood known for murderous drug dealers and teen-age gunslingers.

“The danger is the gangs around the school, the possibility of a shootout,” Guerrero said. “I heard that there was another killing in Los Angeles. They killed a 12-year-old girl. My fear is that the gangs are so active, and it seems innocent children are always the victims.”

Guerrero already has an arrangement at work that allows her to leave early to drive her 9-year-old home from school. If necessary, she said, she will do the same to make sure the 5-year-old gets home safely.

It is hard to avoid the topic of crime with the students of Room 508. Their economic status keeps many of them in the Valley’s toughest areas. They do not need to see violence on television. They can look out the window. Mendoza says he watches the police and gangs stalking each other in his neighborhood in Sepulveda, where the streets have been barricaded against drug dealing.

Vulnerability to crime and the memory of state-sponsored violence in home countries have shaped the reactions of the students to one of the biggest news events and conversational topics of the semester: the Rodney G. King incident and ensuing furor over the Los Angeles Police Department.

Guerrero first saw the videotape of the March 3 beating in Lake View Terrace on the English-language news. She misunderstood. She thought the tape depicted events that had happened years ago. Later that night she watched the news in Spanish.

“Then I understood it had happened only a few days ago,” she said. “That was hard for me. I always thought the police here were very respectable. Now, I don’t like the fact that people are using this to abuse the police, saying the police are this, the police are that. People in the United States are always looking for easy money, for a lawsuit.”

While other students also condemned the beating, their opinions were balanced and somewhat hard-nosed. Several said they were dubious about King’s reported actions leading up to the videotaped images.

“If the law catches you and you act offensive, they are going to react,” Gomez said. “They are human too. Possibly he did something to them. They think they are supermen .

“If you give them a reason, that’s what happens. If you are smart, they won’t do anything to you and they’ll let you go.”

Fodoreanu, who tells hair-raising stories about abuse by the secret police in the Romania of now-dead President Nicolae Ceausescu, said he hopes that U.S. police officers who break the law are prosecuted vigorously. The occasionally frenzied public debate surrounding the incident is important, he said.

“This is freedom. If somebody stops this discussion, it’s not freedom.”

But Fodoreanu admires LAPD Chief Daryl F. Gates and says he should not be ousted. He expressed little respect for King, noting that he has a criminal record.

The King incident struck a deep chord among some students in the class who are in the country illegally and already were wary of the authorities.

Over late-night doughnuts at a mini-mall, two Latino men described the mentality. They recalled the harrowing odysseys they have made across the border on and off for 10 years.

The younger man, who is in his 20s, said he endured a snowstorm in a mountainous Texas border area where he waited to hop a freight train to Los Angeles.

The other, who is in his 30s, said he huddled for excruciating hours, literally stacked among other people, in a modified trailer as it rolled north to San Clemente. At the command of a smuggler of humans who charged $350 per head, he sprinted across an orange grove into a new world.

“It was crazy,” the older man said. “We were grabbing oranges because we hadn’t eaten anything. They had cars waiting for us at the other side. I lost a shoe in the mud.”

His tone philosophical, the older man observed: “There’s something contradictory about a law that says you are illegal in a society where they need your work. They need cheap workers. Americans aren’t going to pick grapes. Americans aren’t going to do the work we do.”

Times have changed in the past 10 years, he said. The risk of being apprehended on the street by immigration officials or police has declined considerably. But the fear lingers.

“Let me tell you something that happened,” the younger man said. “It really was funny. We were playing soccer in the park with friends. A guy from the park came and told us we had to move because we were playing on the baseball field.”

They apparently didn’t move fast enough, he said. The park attendant returned with two armed men in green uniforms.

“We all just took off running out of the park in every direction,” he said. “We thought it was the Migra. They were just park rangers. One guy was yelling, ‘Don’t worry, we’re not going to do anything to you.’ Nobody stopped.”

After class on a Thursday in April, about a dozen students celebrated the arrival of spring break at a little pizza parlor on Van Nuys Boulevard.

Beard brought her guitar and performed the 1960s folk songs that are class favorites. Miguel Godoy, a courtly Salvadoran with sideburns, sang a stirring a cappella version of the melancholy tango “Cuesta Abajo.” After some urging, Song stood up and drew applause with a Korean country song.

Then someone turned up dance music on the radio, and Beard announced that it was time to dance. Within minutes, most of the group were on their feet, laughing, clapping, doing a conga line among the tables.

The restaurant was empty except for students from Room 508, and the windows superimposed their dancing reflections onto the dark street outside.

Faces in the Class

HERASAHAN KADER, Bangladesh

Over the past week she has seen the images of devastation in news reports about the cyclone that killed more than 100,000 people in her country. Her family members were unhurt because they live near the capital city of Dhaka. The worst destruction was in overcrowded and impoverished rural areas.

“Population is a big, big problem in the village country. This season is always a tornado or a flood. Every year, people’s houses are broken, they have no clothes, no food. Many children is died.”

YOUNG SONG, Korea

He grew up in Korea, where he saw American movies in his family’s movie theater.

“Julie Andrews,” he said. “Doris Day. Ben-Hur. Charleton Heston. I see many movies. My father owned a newspaper compendium and a movie theater. I managed the theater.”

His furniture business in Korea failed and he came to the United States with his wife, a floral designer, and his daughter in 1988. He was hired to clean buildings but lost the job about a year ago and is looking for work. “I hope I can find a job. Whatever I can. I want to have a job. I cannot get because I cannot speak and understand English well.”

ARMANDO GOMEZ, Mexico

He is increasingly convinced that self-confidence is key to learning a new language and to succeeding in a new country.

“Yes, there is discrimination against Latinos sometimes. But from what I have seen, many times it’s our own fault. You can’t be timid. You can’t go in and mumble when you ask for a job. You have to shake hands and say ‘Good afternoon, how are you? I’m interested in the job. What have you got to offer?’ If you act like they are doing you some great charity, if you act vulnerable, it’s the worst thing you can do.”

SOCORRO AGUILERA, Jalisco, Mexico

She says her English has gotten markedly better since the beginning of the semester but that finding opportunities to practice outside of class is sometimes hard.

“One time my sister and I went into McDonald’s and tried to order in English. The guy behind the counter was Hispanic, and in a very rude way he said, ‘I understand Spanish. Go ahead and order in Spanish, it’s faster.’

“But we said, ‘No, we don’t want to speak Spanish. We want to practice English.’ ”