ESL students from all over the globe gathered with native speaker students on Wednesday, May 2, in Conference Room B. for a meeting of the Cross-Cultural Partnerships Program.
The program, initiated by ESL part-time instructors Megan Elsea and Gloria Heistein, pairs ESL students with native speakers of English for conversation and cultural exchange.
Heistein, who also helped start a similar program at West Valley College in 1995, said the CCPP became official with DASB funding for coordination last fall, and draws additional financial support from the communication Across the Curri-culum funding.
This quarter, the program matched over 50 ESL students from mostly Asian nations such as China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Stu-dents also originate from India, the Phi-lippines, Iran, Me-xico, Italy, Georgia, Armenia, Bosnia, So-malia and Ethiopia.
“Getting to know a person from another culture is a first step toward eliminating racism, xenophobia, and stereotypes,” say Elsea and Heistein.
In addition, the program is valuable to ESL students who need opportunities to use English outside of the classroom and need to learn “the culture of college.”
According to Elsea and Heistein, several ESL Instructors have been very supportive of the concept of matching their ESL listening and speaking students with a native or near native student.
Elsea said the program has also received support from instructors within divisions such as Speech, ICS, Political Science, as well as language instructors of Spanish and Mandarin.
Some instructors might offer extra credit for participation in the program, said Heistein, who had made participation in the CCPP an integral part of her ESL classes.
According to Heistein, ESL students reported that the CCP program was the most valuable aspect of the course and ICS students benefited from understanding another culture and appreciating the difficulties that a newcomer has when being transplanted to a new culture.
Seventeen year-old ESL student Sara Hojjat relocated to California from Iran nine months ago. She has had two partners with the program.
“With my second partner I got to know much about U.S. culture, which made it easier to live here. I have more self-confidence,” she said.
Paulo Mathias, 19, from Brazil, said he went out on an weekly basis with his partner from Thailand to go to a restaurant, to play pool or to “just talk.”
Japanese ESL student Yasuka Kuma-moto arrived four months ago, but has had a partner for the last quarter. Kuma-moto said the time with her partner helped her “enjoy and relax.”
Conversation topics included everything from food to dating, said Kumamoto, who also said she found out that the American and Japanese cultures are “not so different after all.”
Her goal for this quarter is to “find a best friend who is not from my country, just anyone who speaks English.”
While some students value the cultural experience of the program, others, like Assyrian refugee student Joseph Baba, focus more on linguistic improvement.
Baba said his main interest with the program is to increase his English proficiency and learn the colloquial English that he could “never pick up in a book.”
The expected time commitment to the program is a minimum of four meetings and five hours during the quarter, said Heistein.
Even though the commitment is “a challenge for students on both sides, the rewards are numerous.”
According to Heistein, 25 ESL students are currently without a partner for this quarter.
The CCPP is still looking for native or near-native speakers to partner with ESL students.
Anyone interested in the program can contact Heistein at 408-864-5700, extension 5520 or [email protected]. Elsea is available at 408-864-5700, extension 5440 or [email protected].
