Cultural Adjustment | Educational Background | Language Background
Immigration is inherently stressful and forced migration, as in the case of Vietnamese refugees, even more so (Kleinman, 1982). The Vietnamese refugees were forced to leave their country for reasons of survival, often not knowing where they would eventually resettle. These refugees had to begin to make countless adjustments to assimilate into American culture while coming to terms with the emotional upheaval inherent in being a refugee. Becoming aware of what Vietnamese refugees have experienced and what their educational and language background is will help ESL professionals better assess and be sensitive to their needs.
Vietnamese refugees have experienced a radical upheaval. They have experienced war, seen death and often suffered injury. They have been uprooted from their homes and possessions and separated from their families, country and culture, all in a very short period of time. Now, settled in the United States, and often after spending considerable time in refugee camps, they must try to reconcile themselves to these experiences while going through the myriad adjustments to life in a culture radically different from their native one. This sudden change in lifestyle and social identity understandably resulted in culture shock and stress. Remarkably, many, especially those in the first wave of migration, have adapted well (Thuy, 1976). For others, there are continued adjustments to be made. They must come to an understanding of the systems of employment, housing, education, government and social behavior and relationships, and they must also find a way to fit into these systems.
Haines (1983) states that physical health is one of the major problems in the acculturation process. To begin with, the more recent arrivals may have faced both declining health care in their native country before their departure and poor health conditions in the refugee camps in Southeast Asia. Many, then, arrived in the United States in poor health, without adequate stamina to deal effectively with adjustments to the new culture. Compounded with this, as Brower (1980) says, is the fact that the Vietnamese people are a private people who tend to internalize stress, which results in physical symptoms such as stomach upsets and unexplained aches and pains.
Mental health problems also exist. "Severe depression and other mental health problems may be three times more frequent among the refugees than in the population as a whole" (Brower, 1980). Since acculturation is a process which can extend over years or even decades, these problems are not just an early transition stage for refugees. They may persist or reoccur as different levels of acculturation are achieved, or as their personal or family situation changes.
Haines (1983) says that Vietnamese refugees have generally relied on their extended families, which are the cornerstone of their society, in coping with the physical and mental stresses of resettlement. The family provides much practical and emotional support and Vietnamese spend considerable time and energy working for its benefit. "It is not easy for an American to grasp fully the extent of Vietnamese family involvement in the person's past, present, and future plans" (Brower, 1980). The ultimate adjustment, then, is not solely individual, but must also take place within the broader context.
Since the Vietnamese tend to keep their emotional problems to themselves, or at least within their extended families, a clear picture of many of their struggles has not presented itself (Piotrowski, 1980). The American concept of social services and mental health seems difficult for Vietnamese to understand since it is quite different from the Asian concept (Piotrowski, 1980). In addition, due to vast cultural differences, ways of treating mental health problems, in which frank discussion of feelings, problems, and concerns is desirable, do not seem to be effective for Indochinese refugees (Thuy, 1976).
All of these concerns are of direct importance to ESL professionals. If the student is having financial, family, educational, health, or adjustment problems, these external variables will affect language learning, more specifically, attendance and concentration, making steady progress less likely to occur (Kleinman, 1982). Without work on alleviating these external variables, the effectiveness of the educational program will be compromised.
The educational community, and ESL professionals in particular, can help in the adjustment of Vietnamese students. A supportive educational environment can provide stability, further access to knowledge about language and culture, and provide a key to future employment. At the university level, the prime consideration is to increase the English proficiency of those with deficient language skills which make it difficult to compete successfully with native speakers. In working to help them achieve this proficiency, it is important to understand their educational background.
The Vietnamese culture expresses a great love and respect for learning. In the educational system refugees knew in Vietnam, this learning was achieved with a style and methods which focused on passive rather than active learning. Students relied more on listening, watching and imitating than on discovering things independently. Language learning was done by the grammar-translation method. Class size was generally large, often 80-100 students. The teacher, who had little personal contact with students, was considered the absolute authority, and students followed this authority without question. To question would be to confront or doubt this authority (Thuy, 1976).
University ESL instruction in this country, on the other hand, is often characterized as active and fast-paced. There is considerable teacher-student and student-student interaction, often in small, informal and relaxed classes. The teacher is considered a facilitator of learning, providing opportunities for students to make discoveries for themselves. The teacher is in control of the class but is not authoritarian. The ESL classroom, then, may seem an alien and uncomfortable environment for some Vietnamese.
Vietnamese students in an American ESL classroom may prefer to take a slower, more passive approach. They may feel uncomfortable asking questions when they do not understand. They may prefer or expect well defined, separate roles for teachers and students and feel more comfortable with greater formality. They may also doubt that the methods used, which seem so different from methods they were accustomed to, will be effective (English Lessons, 1976).
The students will come to the ESL class with varying amounts of American education and various language needs. Their first language may have predisposed them to certain interference errors in English. ESL teachers, in addition to being aware of their students' processes of adjustment to this culture and their educational backgrounds, can benefit from a knowledge of their language background.
Having some knowledge of the structure of Vietnamese can provide insight into the problems that Vietnamese students face with English. Many refugees have learned English informally and may have relied heavily on the structure of their language in speculating about the patterns of English. Five major areas of contrast which cause difficulty for Vietnamese learners of English will be outlined in the following pages:
1. Suffixes
2. Tense
3. Be sentences
4. Negation
5. Articles (Teaching English Structures, 1976)
In English, we use a variety of suffixes, both derivational and inflectional. Derivational suffixes can change the meaning and sometimes the part of speech of the word stem. By adding a derivational suffix, success becomes successful, amaze becomes amazement and active becomes activity. Inflectional suffixes, while not changing the basic part of speech of a word, carry grammatical meaning and change the form of the word. By adding an inflectional suffix, achieve becomes achieves, achieving or achieved, honor becomes honors, pure becomes purer and purest and Karl becomes Karl's.
In Vietnamese, there are no suffixes. All words are invariable in form (Thuy, 1976). Several contrasts between the two languages concerning extensively used suffixes follow.
In English, making a noun plural is not as easy as just adding -s. For many words, we simply add -s (actor-actors, monkey-monkeys). However, when a word ends in the letters s, sh, or x, we add -es (campus-campuses, wish-wishes, box-boxes). Depending on the pronunciation of ch, we add either -es or -s (church-churches, monarch-monarchs). And we add -es when y changes to i (lady-ladies). The pronunciation of these suffixes is either [s], [z] or [Iz].
In Vietnamese, the form of the noun remains constant and plural markers in the sentence indicate the number of the noun. Therefore, in addition to remembering to use a plural -s suffix, for which there is no counterpart in Vietnamese, Vietnamese students must learn our spelling conventions. Also, in Vietnamese, [s] and [z] do not occur at the ends of words, and consonant clusters do not exist (Thong, 19??). This makes pronunciation and discernment of the suffix in other people's speech more difficult.
In English, two major ways of indicating possession are by adding 's or ' (Karl's book, Kansas' farmland); or, by using the of possessive form (the woman's name -- the name of the woman). Vietnamese has a possessive construction similar in form to the second one above, which makes use of the preposition of (Teaching English Structures, 1976). Students may have no trouble mastering this construction, which contains no suffixes, because of this parallel between English and Vietnamese. However, they may overuse it or use it incorrectly since now they must distinguish between the two possessive forms in English, where only one exists in their native language . These two forms are not interchangeable. We can say Karl's book but not the book of Karl. Also, the phonological rules which determine the pronunciation of this suffix and the difficulties this causes for Vietnamese students are the same as those briefly described in the preceding section.
Comparative and superlative structures in English involve several changes of the base adjective and related comparative or superlative words depending on the adjective's spelling and number of syllables.
| Old | older than | the oldest |
| confused | more confused than | the most confused |
| busy | busier than | the busiest |
| clever | cleverer than more clever than | the cleverest the most clever |
| important | more important than | the most important |
In addition, there are irregular forms for some adjectives (bad -- worse than -- the worst).
Vietnamese comparative and superlative constructions are roughly parallel to those in English, in terms of word order. However, there is no change in the form of the adjective, since there are no inflectional suffixes in Vietnamese. A word which shows the comparative or superlative relationship is placed after the adjective. The Vietnamese student may then tend to omit the comparative or superlative inflections in the English constructions (Teaching English Structures, 1976). A Vietnamese student thus needs to concentrate on the inflectional forms to be able to state these relationships correctly in English.
In English we can change an adjective to an adverb by adding -ly (beautiful-beautifully) or by using an irregular adverb form (good-well). However, in Vietnamese, the same form of the word can be used as both an adjective and an adverb.
By adding -ing to a verb, we can make a gerund, which functions as a noun, a form which is used extensively in English. In Vietnamese, verbs can be used as nouns without change in their form. Vietnamese students may produce sentences such as *Learn English is hard for Learning English is hard or *I appreciate you send me some books for I would appreciate your sending me some books (Teaching English Structures, 1976). Here the verb form has been used as a noun without the addition of the -ing suffix, a commonly observed error of the Vietnamese speaker (Teaching English to Speakers, 1981).
By placing an -ing suffix on verbs, adjectives can be formed such as in the phrases exhausting work and embarrassing situation. The -ing suffix was added to the verbs exhaust and embarrass to form adjectives. In Vietnamese, verbs can function as adjectives without a change in form. Therefore, Vietnamese students may fail to use the -ing suffix. There may also be confusion about the adjective's placement, since in Vietnamese it is placed after the noun. A Vietnamese student who writes *Mothers do work very concerned about that problem probably means Working mothers are very concerned about that problem (Teaching English Structures, 1976).
This section on suffixes illustrates that English has a more clearly defined distinction between nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. As we saw with Vietnamese, the same words can function both as adverbs and adjectives and verbs can function as nouns and adjectives, all without change in form. Word order within the sentence indicates the relationship between words (Thuy, 1975).
The following sentences call attention to the complexity of our tense system and the time relationships we can show by using various suffixes and auxiliary verbs:
I was eating breakfast when the package arrived.
I ate breakfast when the package arrived.
I had eaten breakfast when the package arrived.
I will be eating breakfast when the package arrives.
I will eat breakfast when the package arrives.
I will have eaten breakfast when the package arrives.
Nothing in the Vietnamese language corresponds directly to the English system of tense (Thuy, 1975). The complex interactions of the auxiliaries and suffixes which comprise these tenses are extremely difficult to master for students whose native language does not have an even vaguely related system. In most Vietnamese sentences, it is not necessary to indicate tense. You can understand by the context whether you are referring to an event in the present, past or future. When it is necessary to indicate tense, the form of the verb stays constant and expressions meaning yesterday, last night, tomorrow, etc. are used.
Sentences involving the verb be in English contrast with sentences using la, which is the Vietnamese equivalent of be. In English, the verb be changes form for the first, second and third persons and for the various tenses. Various forms of be include is, am, are, was, were, have been, has been and had been. La, however, is invariable in form. Vietnamese students must learn the correct forms for subject-verb agreement and the correct forms for the various tenses.
Another contrast is that la is not used with indications of place (Teaching English Structures, 1976) as in the equivalent of I am in Kansas. Although la is used in sentences with predicate nouns, as in the English sentence Mary is a dentist, it is not used in Vietnamese sentences with predicate adjectives, corresponding to the English Mary is intelligent. A Vietnamese student who produces sentences like *John nice or *Homework difficult is probably struggling with interference from his/ her native language.
There are several ways to form the negative in English depending on the form of the verbs in a sentence.
| John is friendly. | John is not friendly. | John isn't friendly. |
| John will talk to you. | John will not talk to you. | John won't talk to you. |
| John answered the phone. | John did not answer the phone. | John didn't answer the phone. |
Negation is a relatively simple process in Vietnamese. The word khong ("not"), is placed before the verb, or in the case of la ("be") A khong pha'i is inserted before la to negate a sentence (Teaching English Structures, 1976). Students thus have to be able to manipulate the auxiliaries and do constructions in learning English negations. The contractions which can be formed, such as isn't or didn't create consonant clusters, which as has been previously mentioned, cause pronunciation difficulties for Vietnamese learners of English.
In most respects, Vietnamese grammar is simpler than its English counterpart, but the system of articles, where the articles vary according to the category of things to which they refer, is definitely more complex (Burmark and Kim, 1978). English also has a complex system of articles. The distinctions between a, an,and the, and between count and mass nouns (noncount nouns) must be learned.
Vietnamese uses a system of classifiers before nouns, which is similar to what we do in English when referring to a single unit or instance of a mass noun as in a piece of chalk, a cup of coffee and a loaf of bread (Teaching English Structures, 1976). In Vietnamese, nearly all nouns require such classifiers (Thuy, 1975). Since this form is in many respects parallel to the behavior of mass nouns in English, Vietnamese students may have a tendency to supply a quantifier before many nouns, whether or not they are mass nouns in English.
Considering the marked differences between English and Vietnamese regarding suffixes, tense, be sentences, negation and articles, and due to the fact that several of these can interplay in each English sentence, mastering English is a challenge. ESL teachers who have some background knowledge in these areas of contrast will be better able to anticipate and understand their students' grammatical mistakes. In addition to this knowledge, an awareness of and sensitivity to the special circumstances of their possible involuntary migration is important.
Background | Purpose of Study | Outline of Research | Developing the Course |
Assessment of Writing Samples | Course Design |
Conclusion and References
Table of Contents for Issue 1 | Front Cover of the Journal of English Grammar on the Web