Week 4: Psychosocial Experience of Immigration

During my first meeting with Sara, she was very timid and spoke softly, hardly even allowing me to hear the Mexican accent that worked its way into her speech.  We played the famous word game, Hangman, as an icebreaker to engage in an activity so as to avoid awkward and inefficient small talk, but still Sara seemed distant and uncomfortable.

Vaughn mentions in "Psychology and Culture" the importance of language mastery in the acculturation process.  She notes that language and culture have a reciprocal relationship and that one must understand language to understand its culture and vice versa.  This concept has presented itself both in and outside my meetings with Sara.

So on that first day, after playing about a half hour of Hangman, Sara was talking a bit more but still at a very low volume.  I figured this to be related solely to the intimidation of meeting a stranger.  At the end of our meeting, I gave Sara my cell phone number and told her she was welcome to contact me whenever she wanted, and I would respond as long as I was not in class or at work.  Sara texted me an hour after I left the school.

We had a short but pleasant texting conversation and she continued to text me almost every day that week after returning home from school.  Turns out Sara is not as shy as I had interpreted.

At meeting number two, I expected Sara to be a different person, enthusiastic to see me and comfortable sharing stories about her week.  This was not the case.  She continued to mumble her words and asked me to spell word after word for her as she wrote responses for math problems on her latest homework assignment.

I relate this experience with the aforementioned concept of language in culture from Vaughn's book.  In a conversation such as texting, Sara is comfortable with her english because she has time to formulate a response and her hispanic accent does not present itself.  However, as soon as she is forced to speak face-to-face, she reverts back to speaking softly and asking for verification on spellings before even attempting to spell the words herself.

This is a new concept for me as I was raised in an area with very few ESL peers and I myself had learned English as my first language.  I grew up loving the language and eager to share my speech and writing with others.  Obviously, AMIS, being a school directed toward immigrant children, is a completely different environment than that, and offers its students the opportunity of sharing their native language with others of similar backgrounds while still immersing them in American culture and schooling.