H.J. / 6th Grade

How long did you do ESL?

• I did ESL for a little over a year. This was back in 6th grade when I lived in Vancouver.

What kind of exercises or activities do you do during ESL time?

• I remember doing a lot of activities during ESL. The teachers at least tried to make them engaging. Those activities helped us learn, because the songs teachers would make us sing would get stuck in our heads. At the end of the day, ESL students including myself would have memorized so many vocabularies, although we would have forgotten the definitions to some of the words we learned about. Most of the activities they tried to do were really child-like, but I guess that worked because our English competencies were probably worse than an average Canadian baby back then.

Does ESL pull you out of class or recess? How often do you do ESL? How do you feel about this?

• ESL didn’t pull me out of recess; we would have gotten so mad and there probably would have been child riots if that was the case. We were pulled out of classes, though, when the local kids would have English class. I went into a separate classroom with a bunch of other Asian kids like me who couldn’t speak English. Most of them were Chinese, too, so basically the only language I could use in school was body language. I had ESL four times a week, if I remember right. Again, it was helpful, but really child-like. Sometimes, I would be like ‘Why am I doing this? This is stupid.’ but then remind myself of the fact that I suck at English so I have to do it anyway.

Did the ESL program help you in other subjects?

• ESL helped me in English, but not in other subjects. How is it supposed to help me in other subjects? Oh, I guess it helped me understand better in other classes because my English got better. But I don’t think that necessarily means that ESL helped me in other classes; ESL did its job and helped me in English. Don’t think I can make the argument that ESL helped me in science and maths, for example.

How do you believe the ESL program addresses or accommodates cultural differences that you may face after coming to a new country? Is there cultural education along with learning English?

• I think I was too young to think about ‘cultural education’. I don’t remember being taught Canadian culture, but don’t want to blame the teachers either because we probably wouldn’t have understood a word teachers said if they were to teach us about culture.

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