Success With Hispanics: Why Don't Hispanics Learn English?
I have been asked so many times why Hispanics don’t learn or want to learn English, that I just smile and jokingly answer back with, "¿Qué?, no comprendo inglés." That means, "What, I don’t understand English?" Well, this gets their attention real fast and hopefully yours.
I have been asked so many times why Hispanics don’t learn or want to learn English, that I just smile and jokingly answer back with, "¿Qué?, no comprendo inglés." That means, "What, I don’t understand English?" Well, this gets their attention real fast and hopefully yours.
It really is a good question. I would think the same thing if I were an English-speaking Anglo born and raised in the United States. It certainly does appear, at least on the surface, that a great majority of Latinos could care less about learning English.
The truth of the matter, however, is that most Latinos who come to the United States do want to learn English. In this article I am going to tell you the three main reasons why they do not succeed.
Before I do this, I would like to cite some recent research done by the United Way in Salt Lake City regarding the immigrant population. They did a rather extensive survey of immigrants trying to determine what percentage of the immigrant population at one time or another had actually been enrolled in some type of English training course. Even I was surprised: A whopping 80 percent of all immigrants surveyed had been in some type of formal English training course!
So, rather than asking "Why don’t Hispanics want to learn English?" maybe the better questions is "Why don’t Hispanics learn English when they try? "
For now, trust me when I tell you that most Latinos really do want to learn English. I know this firsthand and not just through a survey done by the United Way. I have talked with thousands of Latinos, I have written a very popular English training course, and I know that most Latinos do, in fact, want to learn English.
So, the question really is "Why don’t they learn?" There are three main reasons why many Latinos do not learn English, and we’ll explore them here.
It is very hard to learn a language if you are not learning in the right ways. Just as there is a right way and a wrong way to fly an airplane, there is a right way and a wrong way for an adult to learn a new language.
So, what are they doing wrong? This column doesn’t allow space for much detail, but one main flaw is that they are trying to learn a language they don’t know (English) through the same language they don’t know (English). This is called an immersion approach, and it is very, very frustrating for an adult learner. It may work for a small child, but they are totally immersed and don’t have 20, 30 or 40 years of existing language infrastructure in another language to overcome. By the way, last I checked it takes little kids a good three to four years to learn to speak even decently well. Most adults should be able to learn a new language very well in under 300 hours total learning activity. Most adults can become 85 percent to 90 percent proficient in a language (compared to a native speaker) in a year or less if they invest five to six hours weekly in the process.
Another common mistake is going to group classes trying to learn English alongside of a bunch of other people who don’t know how to speak English. Many times you can even see Latinos practicing their English with, say, a Russian. Now, that’s just wonderful. Learning to speak a new language by practicing with another person who doesn’t speak the language well, this is like the Tower of Babel all over again! I could go on and on about improper learning methods, but you get the point.
In order to learn well you need to do the right things at the right time in the right ways. If you don’t, well, the airplane either doesn’t get off the ground or it crashes into the side of a mountain somewhere. For a lot of people, when the airplane crashes, it is hard to get back in the cockpit and try again.
Maybe we just need better English courses. Maybe the fault is primarily with the teachers who really do not know how to teach English well to Latinos. If you had any Spanish classes in high school, you may be able to relate to this. How many people come out of our American school systems speaking Spanish well after two to four years of Spanish classes? You get the point.
Let’s face the truth. A lot, if not most, Hispanics in this country are working very long hours to support their families here and, many times, in another country. By the time many of them get home they are absolutely exhausted. They get up at 5 a.m. and might get home at 8 or 9 p.m. Many Latinos are working two jobs, sometimes for another employer or sometimes doing odd jobs on the side trying to build up their own little business. Either for you, for someone else or perhaps for themselves, they are working hard and working very long hours. This is fact. They might not tell you this, but reality is reality. There simply is no time (or energy) for them to get out of work, get showered up and go to an English class.
If you hire and manage Latinos who speak primarily Spanish, you actually have a legal responsibility to communicate with them. You expose yourself to possible litigation if you cannot properly prepare, train or manage the people under your care. You have a critical pressing need to learn Spanish, and an ethical obligation as well. I really believe this. You are the leader, you are the manager, you are the owner. You are responsible to communicate with the people you hire and lead. If you cannot meet the legal obligations of an employer with employees who cannot speak English, you simply should not hire them. If you do hire them, you have a critical need to learn to communicate with them.
People who speak Spanish, on the other hand, have all kinds of support systems in place that really do not require them to learn English. You may not want to hear this, but it is the truth. You can get by quite nicely in the United States not speaking English in most parts of the country.
There are Spanish language newspapers, radio stations, television stations, stores, physicians, attorneys, etc. You can go to any ATM machine and choose English or Spanish. You can call any major company in this country and get assistance in Spanish. I am not saying this is good or bad, just that it is. Even if this is not the reality one would have designed if in charge of the overall scheme of the development of culture and society, the facts are the facts, and these are the facts.
So, for the Spanish-speaker in this country, there really is no critical need to learn English. The people who do learn or attempt to learn do so because they do want to acculturate, they do want to get ahead, they want to move forward. Thankfully, at least according to the United Way of Salt Lake City, 80 percent of all Latinos want to get ahead in this country by learning English. That’s some pretty outstanding news, if you ask me.
Let me wrap this column up this way. For the most part, Latinos do want to learn English. If you really want them to learn English I would like to send you a free special report titled, "How Latinos Can and Should Learn English." If you would like this complimentary report, send me an e-mail message, ask for the report by name and include your contact information. I’ll send you this report with no obligation to you. I think you will find it very interesting and very helpful for the Latino people you might like to help to either learn or perfect the English language. Also, if you want to get this report in Spanish to hand to your Latinos, just ask for that as well. We’ll send you both!
Photo of Ricardo Gonzalez
I have been asked so many times why Hispanics don’t learn or want to learn English, that I just smile and jokingly answer back with, "¿Qué?, no comprendo inglés." That means, "What, I don’t understand English?" Well, this gets their attention real fast and hopefully yours.
It really is a good question. I would think the same thing if I were an English-speaking Anglo born and raised in the United States. It certainly does appear, at least on the surface, that a great majority of Latinos could care less about learning English.
The truth of the matter, however, is that most Latinos who come to the United States do want to learn English. In this article I am going to tell you the three main reasons why they do not succeed.
Before I do this, I would like to cite some recent research done by the United Way in Salt Lake City regarding the immigrant population. They did a rather extensive survey of immigrants trying to determine what percentage of the immigrant population at one time or another had actually been enrolled in some type of English training course. Even I was surprised: A whopping 80 percent of all immigrants surveyed had been in some type of formal English training course!
So, rather than asking "Why don’t Hispanics want to learn English?" maybe the better questions is "Why don’t Hispanics learn English when they try? "
For now, trust me when I tell you that most Latinos really do want to learn English. I know this firsthand and not just through a survey done by the United Way. I have talked with thousands of Latinos, I have written a very popular English training course, and I know that most Latinos do, in fact, want to learn English.
So, the question really is "Why don’t they learn?" There are three main reasons why many Latinos do not learn English, and we’ll explore them here.
Poor Learning Methods
Razón Uno: Poor Learning MethodsIt is very hard to learn a language if you are not learning in the right ways. Just as there is a right way and a wrong way to fly an airplane, there is a right way and a wrong way for an adult to learn a new language.
So, what are they doing wrong? This column doesn’t allow space for much detail, but one main flaw is that they are trying to learn a language they don’t know (English) through the same language they don’t know (English). This is called an immersion approach, and it is very, very frustrating for an adult learner. It may work for a small child, but they are totally immersed and don’t have 20, 30 or 40 years of existing language infrastructure in another language to overcome. By the way, last I checked it takes little kids a good three to four years to learn to speak even decently well. Most adults should be able to learn a new language very well in under 300 hours total learning activity. Most adults can become 85 percent to 90 percent proficient in a language (compared to a native speaker) in a year or less if they invest five to six hours weekly in the process.
Another common mistake is going to group classes trying to learn English alongside of a bunch of other people who don’t know how to speak English. Many times you can even see Latinos practicing their English with, say, a Russian. Now, that’s just wonderful. Learning to speak a new language by practicing with another person who doesn’t speak the language well, this is like the Tower of Babel all over again! I could go on and on about improper learning methods, but you get the point.
In order to learn well you need to do the right things at the right time in the right ways. If you don’t, well, the airplane either doesn’t get off the ground or it crashes into the side of a mountain somewhere. For a lot of people, when the airplane crashes, it is hard to get back in the cockpit and try again.
Maybe we just need better English courses. Maybe the fault is primarily with the teachers who really do not know how to teach English well to Latinos. If you had any Spanish classes in high school, you may be able to relate to this. How many people come out of our American school systems speaking Spanish well after two to four years of Spanish classes? You get the point.
Logistical Restraints
Razón Dos: Logistical RestraintsLet’s face the truth. A lot, if not most, Hispanics in this country are working very long hours to support their families here and, many times, in another country. By the time many of them get home they are absolutely exhausted. They get up at 5 a.m. and might get home at 8 or 9 p.m. Many Latinos are working two jobs, sometimes for another employer or sometimes doing odd jobs on the side trying to build up their own little business. Either for you, for someone else or perhaps for themselves, they are working hard and working very long hours. This is fact. They might not tell you this, but reality is reality. There simply is no time (or energy) for them to get out of work, get showered up and go to an English class.
No Critical Need
Razón Tres: No Critical NeedIf you hire and manage Latinos who speak primarily Spanish, you actually have a legal responsibility to communicate with them. You expose yourself to possible litigation if you cannot properly prepare, train or manage the people under your care. You have a critical pressing need to learn Spanish, and an ethical obligation as well. I really believe this. You are the leader, you are the manager, you are the owner. You are responsible to communicate with the people you hire and lead. If you cannot meet the legal obligations of an employer with employees who cannot speak English, you simply should not hire them. If you do hire them, you have a critical need to learn to communicate with them.
People who speak Spanish, on the other hand, have all kinds of support systems in place that really do not require them to learn English. You may not want to hear this, but it is the truth. You can get by quite nicely in the United States not speaking English in most parts of the country.
There are Spanish language newspapers, radio stations, television stations, stores, physicians, attorneys, etc. You can go to any ATM machine and choose English or Spanish. You can call any major company in this country and get assistance in Spanish. I am not saying this is good or bad, just that it is. Even if this is not the reality one would have designed if in charge of the overall scheme of the development of culture and society, the facts are the facts, and these are the facts.
So, for the Spanish-speaker in this country, there really is no critical need to learn English. The people who do learn or attempt to learn do so because they do want to acculturate, they do want to get ahead, they want to move forward. Thankfully, at least according to the United Way of Salt Lake City, 80 percent of all Latinos want to get ahead in this country by learning English. That’s some pretty outstanding news, if you ask me.
Let me wrap this column up this way. For the most part, Latinos do want to learn English. If you really want them to learn English I would like to send you a free special report titled, "How Latinos Can and Should Learn English." If you would like this complimentary report, send me an e-mail message, ask for the report by name and include your contact information. I’ll send you this report with no obligation to you. I think you will find it very interesting and very helpful for the Latino people you might like to help to either learn or perfect the English language. Also, if you want to get this report in Spanish to hand to your Latinos, just ask for that as well. We’ll send you both!
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July 16, 2016
There are plenty of reasons a person should know at least the basics of the language of the new land he/she is moving into. But if for no other reason, for the health of your life...learn basic English. I work in a hospital in Houston. Too many Spanish speaking patient's who cannot communicate on any level with the doctors, nurses, and other healthcare staff, that are trying to save there lives.
Latinos learning English- why it is 6 times harder than Americans learning Spanish!
August 22, 2017
I would first like to challenge any "American" who speaks English to read the paragraph write by Tommy....there are 3 glaring mistakes (ok, 2 are glaring, one is subtle) in it... and I haven't even addressed the problem with the content of the message! Let's hope Tommy isn't one of the people offering assistance since s/he can't get it right....God help us all!
So, a bit of background information might be helpful here: I am an American, born and raised in the USA. A Caucasian, college-educated person whose major in college was Spanish. I also taught Spanish for 23 years to high school and junior high school students. In addition, I had taught Spanish to adults and translated college course material. The learning of a language is never a walk in the park for most of us; however, it is much more difficult for someone to utter sounds that s/he has never heard, let alone ever said in his or her entire life! And that is just the beginnings of the nightmare ahead.....English makes it even more difficult by having vowels that make 5 or more DIFFERENT sounds...EACH!! And we haven't even addressed the other aspects of learning a language, such as sounding out a word you hear in order to write it down so you can look it up later, sentence syntax, structure and grammatical components!! What people who speak English do NOT understand is that English is MUCH MORE DIFFICULT to learn for SEVERAL reasons..... but the BIGGEST obstacle is that we have 6 vowels that, when taken one by one (not in combinations,) create DIFFERENT sounds! Each vowel can make a minimum of five different sounds. Before I give examples, let's try to have more compassion for those people trying to learn a language where this a formidable foe....in Spanish, each of the 5 vowels make one sound, with only 2 of the vowels (a and e) making a slightly different sound when found at the beginning of a word. Learning English is NOT the same as learning Spanish...., so... what's YOUR excuse for not learning Spanish!?!
Examples of vowels making different sounds - "a" (at, ape, an, a, all), "e" (exit, belt, be, end, perish), "i" (it, ice, ink, incite, ill, I'll) "o" (of, owl, open, opposite, or, on), "u" (up, use, urgent, push, usher, usurp) and let us not forget "y" (gym, sky, myre, scythe, Babylon, syndrome, gyro, yves.....)
Ricardo - Why Mexicans don't learn english
March 2, 2018
Hey Ricardo, first off, good article. My grandfather, who was born in Mexico, came to the US as a going adult. You mentioned in your article that there is no real need for Mexicans to learn English because there are so many services in spanish for them. My grandfather's theory for this, which makes perfect sense, is that all of these services are provided so that the Spanish speakers don't learn English hence keeping them down. A people who don't know the language of the land are thought of as dumb and less of a person. It keeps racism at 100% and there are no signs of this changing. Someone needs to rise up in the Mexican community to urge these people to change this, because until they do, they will continue to be marginalized.
Response to article
July 14, 2018
I have Teaching English as a Foreign Language certification, I taught English for five and a half years in Russia, and now I am an ESL instructor through a local college. I also have a bachelor's degree in journalism and 25 years of experience as a newspaper reporter and editor, so I hope I know a little bit about the English language. In addition, I had four years of Spanish in high school and college and have probably an upper-intermediate command of the language. I have used it in communicating with Latinos here in the U.S. and online students from Latin American countries.
To address some of your points:
1. The program I teach under is federally funded and requires that all instruction be in English. There are times, however, when I skirt the rule and try to explain grammar and other concepts in Spanish, if there are no students who speak another language besides Spanish present. In addition, as much as it might make sense, the cost would be prohibitive to have separate classes for Latinos, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indians, etc. (Classes are free to students.) I'm not sure about other areas of the country, but here all the ESL instructors are Anglos. I would like to see more second- and third-generation Latinos living here in the U.S. become ESL teachers.
2. I try to make my instruction as practical as possible. While I do teach grammar, I try to incorporate vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation into real-life situations. For example, this past academic year I used a restaurant menu I found online and printed off to practice going out to eat. We also had a job interview and instruction on writing a cover letter and resume, as well as in-class "trips" to the grocery store and airport.
3. Finally, one of our biggest hurdles here is to teach English to students who are barely literate in Spanish. In the time that I've been here, I've had only one Latino student who attended university in her home country. A few of the others graduated from high school in their homelands, but the rest dropped out of school in elementary or middle school. I have two students who only finished second grade and one who only finished first grade. As a result, it takes much longer to explain things for my classes compared to learners who don't speak English but have a solid background in their native languages.
Thank you for listening. These are just some initial reactions to your article.
Why Won't Latinos Learn English
October 15, 2022
Having lived primarily in LA & NYC, its unavoidable seeing how many Latinos dont speak English. Statistically 30% of Latinos speak NO English-not a bit & can get by-NO English. Latinos are 20% of the populace but the % on lifelong Social Services (not a few yrs to get a leg up, but lifelong)? 5%? 7%? No, 30%. 30% of the people on welfare are Latinos yet they're 20% of the populace.
Clearly there's a direct correlation between not speaking the language & not doing well. No one, prior to making a permanent move to another country does it that week. You know yrs in advance. Learn the language then if you'll be too busy (always?!) to learn when you get there.
The idea there's a plot to keep Latinos down by making it too easy not to learn English is just silly. Even so, why should that affect anyone? Don't you WANT to teach your kids a vocabulary word around the dinner table, help w/ their homework-which can only be math if you haven't bothered to learn the language-be full of pride you're not a drag on your new country, show your kids this?
I do not understand being content not to be able to communicate, for your kids at the very LEAST. Yes, by making "Walk/Don't Walk" into green & red symbols so no one needs to learn those two English words is the least we do to aid not speaking the language but of course, its up to the person. Don't blame the country for making it easy to NOT learn English. Thats just silly too (as is the comment about being grammatically correct-as if that matters).
