Reply #11: I have mixed feelings about this as well

[WilmywoodNCparalegal]

At the age of 15, without knowing one word of English, I ended up (long story) in a rural North Carolina high school within two weeks of my arrival in the U.S. By the time the spring semester rolled around, I had gained a decent command of English, enough to guarantee my graduation in 2 years and to pursue college studies. My parents and I did not speak English in the home, nor did I attend ESL classes, primarily because they did not exist at the school. How did I do it? I interacted with people everyday, I did my homework, I read books in English and I even forced myself to do crosswords in English, so that I could learn as fast as I could, because my final objective was to succeed.

I did encounter anti-foreign sentiments at my high school. In fact, I was pretty much shunned by my classmates, except for the theater/music crowd.

I think that if someone who does not know English wants to learn it well enough to succeed, he/she can do that; however, doing so takes a lot of effort and energy. I also think that it helped being surrounded by English speakers everywhere I went, rather than going back to a non-English speaking community after school.

Plenty of immigrants have learned English successfully without the aid of ESL classes or sympathetic classmates. In fact, many immigrants of the past were discriminated against, poor and uneducated, yet their children have made it.

Learning English in no way means forgetting about where you came from or your native language. I am an Italian citizen to this day, I speak Italian everyday professionally and with my family and I will never cease to be Italian.