Contributed by Albert Janzen
Albert Janzen provides some food for thought following a recent meeting with a pair of Vietnamese newcomers. This article is unedited, in his own words:
Last night I kept my promise to meet with Phat Tran, a Vietnamese man who had contacted me recently to ask for help with learning English. We met at McDonalds together with his friend Hong who had come along. I had taught Tran as part of a Level 2 ESL class in the fall of 2023 at a local church ESL program for refugees and newcomers and when I left my teaching there, I wrote Tran that he could contact me if he wanted any help with further English instruction. His recent email to me was his reply.
I had prepared myself by creating a Word document with suggestions on how to learn English and arrived armed with my laptop computer and a notepad to record information from this interview. My First Aid Attendant experience had taught me to always know the history of an injury before moving ahead with treatment, so I used the same approach with questions about previous English language learning of my two Vietnamese friends. This led to an interesting discussion of how they had studied English in Vietnam.
English language learning in Vietnam had been the same for both of them although Hong is about 8 years older than Tran. English classes had been given three times per week for 45 minutes each lesson. The teachers had been Vietnamese and lessons had not included much practice with speaking English. I was not surprised to find them hard to understand although I was impressed that they understood me as much as they did. Really, how many people would they be able to practice speaking English with in Vietnam? Of course here in Canada they have much greater need to speak English, however both of them work in a mushroom farm with many other Vietnamese people so their daily dose of English is probably still quite small.
Hong has been in Canada 6 years and Tran has only been here 3 years and both of them have gone to a church based ESL program for a few months, not nearly long enough. Hong’s English is slightly better than Tran’s as we used our cell phones to translate as needed. Cheating with technology works great because my Vietnamese is almost nonexistent.
Then I asked them about their reasons to learn English and both of them said it was to improve communication and to obtain Permanent Resident status, a very good rationale. Next I asked them about their work schedule to see if they would be able to attend English classes which I had included on the document that I was giving to them. There are ESL classes at the church where I teach during the week and also the Archway English LINC program. This is where I ran into some rather surprising information.
Their workday begins daily at 6 am and lasts for 8 hours but can also extend to 10 hours or longer. Furthermore, they work seven days each week, and Hong said he has been doing this for six years! Not only that, but each of them has a second job too some evenings. I could see that these two men have very little spare time for anything else but work in their lives. Hong is married with his wife and child living here and Tran is divorced with his wife and two daughters in Vietnam. His profile picture on the cell phone shows his two daughters and I can only imagine the pain in his heart for not having seen them for three years by now.
Both Tran and Hong are the most pleasant people anyone would want to meet and we can be quite sure that we will not see them at any church on a Sunday morning. It would only be in the evening when most of our churches no longer have any services. The best chance to see them for me or anyone else would be in the later afternoon or evening on a day when they are not working then.
What a life for these newcomers to our paradise in Canada! How many of us have any even a vague idea of what these two mushroom pickers are up against in their struggle to become permanent residents here, and that is what they told me that they do every day, together with some 60 other workers at that farm. I feel sheltered and pampered when I compare myself with their circumstances. Tran’s very simple question in his email to me on March 11/25 was: I want to study english. Can you help me! That came from his cell phone because he has no computer, which is almost the bottom line these days if people want to move forward with any self improvement like residency status, education, new job, etc.
How can I help Tran and Hong? I am still thinking about that, and there are probably many more people like them in a similar category of need to learn English and just to acculturate to life in Canada. Or would it be better to say that some of us need to acculturate to the reality of the life of our Canadian newcomer neighbors? How could we do that? What will it take for the Christian salt in the salt shaker of our churches to find its way into the needy places of our communities?
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