ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE (ESL)
Although “Continue Education” at many school districts offers English as a second language, there are not many Asian Americans take the course. Some of the reasons from many Asian immigrants are: Asians are “too shy” to take it without knowing anyone in the class, there is no transportation, those are too difficult and may not be practical. Asian Center decided to use the capacity building grant from the Michigan Department of Community Health (now Michigan Department of Health and Human Services) to develop a curriculum that was based on a survey specifically conducted for the potential students, mostly were senior immigrants.
This curriculum addresses the language barrier that the senior Asian American population faced in this country. It focused on teaching the basic language skills required for people to handle the communication for everyday living needs such as days, times, postal service, grocery shopping, banking and communication with medical personnel. The program was adopted in various Asian communities and delivered by bilingual community health workers in their communities.