New York: Proficiency in English Decreases Over a Decade

Thu Jan 20 00:19:29 UTC 2005

Dear fellow contributors,

After reading this article one can now better understand why the New
York Times editorial staff is pushing the English language globally;
not only do they want to make it easier for their reporters to go
through life without ever having to learn the languages and cultures of
those about whom they report, but they also want other governments to
provide their citizens with English language training so that when they
arrive as new immigrants in New York the municipal government will not
have to do it.

Hamo

R. A. Stegemann
EARTH's Manager and HKLNA-Project Director
EARTH - East Asian Research and Translation in Hong Kong
http://homepage.mac.com/moogoonghwa/earth/
Tel/Fax: 852 2630 0349

On 20 Jan 2005, at 02:29, Harold F. Schiffman wrote:

>> From the NYTimes,
>
> January 19, 2005
> Proficiency in English Decreases Over a Decade
> By NINA BERNSTEIN
>
> The number of New York adults who have a problem speaking English
> increased by 30 percent between 1990 and 2000, to more than 1.5 million
> throughout the city, according to figures released by the city
> yesterday.
> That amounts to more than one in four adult New Yorkers, and officials
> said more recent figures show no sign of a decline. With the supply of
> English classes for immigrants lagging far behind demand, Joseph Salvo,
> the city's demographer, said the language problem is now affecting the
> education of the next generation. More than half of all births in the
> city
> are to foreign-born women.
>
> Almost half of the 1.5 million people with English difficulties live in
> households where no one speaks English proficiently, said Mr. Salvo,
> the
> director of the population division of the Department of City Planning,
> citing statistics culled from a new analysis of census and immigration
> information. Another quarter of the group live in households where
> only a
> child is proficient in the language.
>
> The immigrant groups with the highest number of births - Dominicans,
> Mexicans and Chinese - also have the highest rates of difficulty with
> English, ranging from 70 to 76 percent, he added. Yet in the areas of
> Queens and Brooklyn where those immigrants are most concentrated,
> English
> classes are especially scarce.
>
> For generations of immigrants to New York, learning English has been
> the
> passport to a better life, whether it turned a busboy into a waiter,
> bridged the distance between an ethnic enclave and the Ivy League, or
> was
> just used to persuade the landlord to turn on the heat.
>
> "English literacy supports self-sufficiency, supports the ability to
> get a
> raise, to get a promotion, and it fosters children's academic success,"
> said Jeanne B. Mullgrav, commissioner of the city Department of Youth
> and
> Community Development, citing research that underscores the importance
> of
> parental involvement. "To the extent that parents improve their skills,
> children succeed."
>
> In the migrations before 1965, most newcomers spoke European languages.
> But what is striking about the current generation of immigrants is the
> vast range of tongues they use on the city's streets, adding
> difficulties
> in education, business and the minutiae of daily life and making the
> need
> for English as a common language all the more urgent.
>
> "The earlier waves of Southern and Eastern Europeans that dominated
> immigration at the turn of the 20th century spoke many languages," Mr.
> Salvo said. "But the level of language diversity today far surpasses
> anything we have seen in the city's history."
>
> Of those who do not speak English very well, 51 percent speak Spanish
> at
> home, 13 percent speak Chinese, 8 percent Russian, 4 percent French,
> including Creole, 3 percent Korean, 3 percent Italian and 2 percent
> Polish, with other languages accounting for 16 percent - a range of
> 175 to
> 200 languages.
>
> Mr. Salvo's statistics were the framework for a meeting aimed at
> creating
> a new public-private alliance for teaching English to the city's
> newcomers
> through family programs. The session, called an Immigrant Family
> Literacy
> Summit, was convened by The New York Times Company Foundation, the
> city's
> Department of Youth and Community Development and the Literacy
> Assistance
> Center, an umbrella research group for many of the programs that teach
> English to immigrants.
>
> Compared with the general population, census and city statistics show,
> adults without proficiency in English have less education. Close to
> half
> have not graduated from high school, compared to 27 percent of all New
> Yorkers 18 and over. Many may not be literate in their own language,
> noted
> Mr. Salvo, and that adds to the difficulty they may have in learning to
> read and write in English.
>
> All but 6 percent are foreign born, he said, and those recorded as
> born in
> the United States were nearly all born in Puerto Rico. At least 40
> percent
> arrived in the decade between 1990 and 2000, compared to 44 percent
> between 1965 and 1989, and only 10 percent before 1965. They are a
> little
> older than the city's general population, because the foreign-born
> tend to
> be workers, not children. But the lion's share - 33 percent of those
> who
> have trouble speaking English - are between 30 and 44, the same age
> distribution as in the city's adult population of 5.9 million.
>
> Some of Mr. Salvo's most striking figures relate to the high immigrant
> share of the city's 121,000 births in 2000. The top three immigrant
> groups
> alone account for one out of every six births, he said: 8,940 births to
> women from the Dominican Republic, 6,410 births to women from Mexico
> and
> 5,680 to women from China. In these same groups, 70 percent, 76 percent
> and 75 percent respectively reported that they speak English less than
> "very well," a response that typically means real difficulty with the
> language, census studies show.
>
> Andres Alonso, a chief of staff in the city's Education Department,
> reminded participants in the literacy summit of studies showing the
> resilience of immigrant children, who tend to outperform the
> native-born
> if they enter the school system before the ninth grade. But recalling
> his
> own family's migration from Cuba when he was 12, he spoke of the
> disadvantages immigrant parents have in navigating bureaucracies in
> order
> to assist their children.
>
> Currently, even locating a family literacy program is a challenge,
> Elyse
> B. Rudolph, the executive director of the Literacy Assistance center,
> told
> the group. The center counts 183 programs with about 45,000 seats that
> are
> offered through a confusing mix of schools, libraries, churches, unions
> and work-development sites, supported by fluctuating streams of city,
> state, federal and private money.
>
> Maps produced for the session showed a more fundamental problem: a
> mismatch between program sites and the areas where immigrants who lack
> English proficiency are most concentrated. Manhattan has 80 sites,
> while
> Queens, with the world's most densely diverse immigrant neighborhoods,
> has
> only 14.
>
> Another problem was raised by Digna Sanchez, president of Learning
> Leaders, a nonprofit organization that recruits and trains volunteers
> in
> the public schools. Many of the city's new immigrant parents are here
> illegally, she said, and while city agencies try to maintain an
> environment of "don't ask, don't tell," sources of funds increasingly
> demand Social Security numbers to track how many students are being
> served.
>
> "No matter how you look at it," said Richard Fish, an adviser at the
> Department of Youth and Community Development, "the number of programs
> and
> students we're supporting is insufficient."
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/19/nyregion/19english.html
>
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