And, Ms. Welcher says linguists and student interns at the Rosetta Project are doing their part.
An ESL Class on the Move
Immigrants and refugees arriving in the United States often have trouble with the way many Americans move from place to place. Only the biggest American cities have good public transportation systems. So you need a car to get to school or work in other parts of the country. This can be a problem for some immigrants.
To pass a driver’s test, they need to speak and understand English. But to learn English, they might need to take classes that they can only get to by driving. One school has found a creative solution to the problem.
On a recent Saturday morning, students gathered at the Foreign Language Institute in Nashville, Tennessee. They came for training in English-as-a-second-language, or ESL. The building where the class was held is hard to get to on foot, and there are no sidewalks.
ESL students during a lesson inside their mobile classroom in Nashville, Tennessee. (Mike Osborne for VOA)
More than 1,200 refugees settle in Nashville each year. Like many American cities, Nashville was built for drivers and their vehicles, not people on foot or bicycles. That makes things difficult for the refugees, since many of them can neither drive nor speak English.
Many refugees in Nashville live in apartment buildings 20 kilometers away from the Foreign Language Institute. The Institute decided that if the ESL students could not get to the classroom, the classroom would come to the students.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25