Academic Achievement and Language

Cultural Case Study: Maria

This cultural case study examines the language competencies, social and human capital assets of a Spanish immigrant to the U.S. named Maria. She is 16 and lives in a community where the Hispanic population is considerable. Her family is supportive and engaged in her life and she receives substantial assistance from them. She is motivated and does well in her studies. She is able to practice her L1 and her L2 all the time thanks to a school that is good at helping ELLs and a community that shares in her ethnic background where her L1 is still commonly used among the inhabitants. This paper also provides some simple suggestions for what the school could do to continue to help Maria to achieve her objectives.

Introduction

Maria is an ELL who has a strong personal and cultural identity. She is Hispanic -- an immigrant from Spain -- and is 16 years old. She is in possession of strong human and social capital. Her family of mother, father, two sisters and brother are very supportive and offer her strong supportive relationships that she can and does use to give her confidence, support, direction and guidance (Suarez-Orozco, Rhodes, Milburn, 2009). She is friendly, outgoing, positive, communicative, inquisitive, helpful towards others, motivated, and disciplined. She does not demonstrate any stressors because she is always positive and always views challenges as opportunities and not as obstacles. She is motivated to be a primary care nurse and she has friends in her community, which is very bilingual oriented (a majority of Hispanics live in the community). She draws on the her L1 language competencies (is fluent in Spanish, can read, write, listen and speak the language), and her L2 language competencies are very good as well (she can read, write, listen to and speak the L2). Her types of capital and competencies have worked together to help her achieve academic success, which has helped her achieve some standing in the community, as she is recognized by others as doing well in school and being a leader.

Maria the Language Learner

As a language learner and a student, her capital and competencies have enabled her to want to pursue higher education and obtain a career in the medical field as a primary care provider. She wants to be bilingual and use both her languages so that she can help many different types of people and be someone whom others seek out for help and care. Her social and human capital has been gained by her strong familial supports because they have given her the confidence to be herself, ask questions, work hard, make friends easily, and set goals for herself. Her family is very positive and always outgoing and friendly. They do not ever appear to be sad or depressed. Maria has not experienced any discrimination because the community in which she lives is very welcoming of people of her ethnic background.

Maria has several benefits in terms of social well-being, emotional well-being and academic achievement and future career: she has support from teachers and peers; she relates well with others, she has good, positive goals for herself (she wants to go to college and become a nurse) and she has shown the ability to improve her language competencies. She shows emotional consistency and an ability and desire to advance in academic achievement. Her choice in a future career not only seems possible but highly likely as she will be a bi-lingual nurse and that is something that could easily earn her a job.

Maria's Community

Maria has plenty of time to practice Spanish because of the community in which she lives, which offers people who speak Spanish, some publications in Spanish, and some resources (such as menus) that are printed in Spanish for the local population. She is very intelligent because it is clear that she has a lot of experience exercising her mental faculties. As Pettito and Kovelman (2013) note, being bilingual does place certain demands on the brain's processes, and as Maria matures and begins to be in a position where she can use her Spanish more (in a job, for instance, where Spanish-speaking nurses are needed for Spanish-speaking patients), her fluency will most likely get even stronger. This level of bilingualism enhances the benefits she enjoys because it gives her a good solid footing for the future.

Its connection to the Immigrant Paradox and the Achievement Gap is meaningful in the sense that right now Maria has strong supports that she can rely upon to develop her language competencies. Without those supports, she would not fare half as well as she has. The fact that she has them and has the desire to succeed and has a clear goal for herself that would allow her to implement her bilingualism shows that she is looking ahead realistically and with common sense. She will achieve success thanks to her focus, her application and her supports (Meisel, Jurgen, 2008).

As TESOL (2006) notes, "English language learners will develop their own cultural sensibilities in local contexts" (p. 1). Moreover, this cultural sensibility is impacted by socioeconomic factors, age and educational background. In short, there is no fixed "culture" that ELLs have that teachers can use in their approach to them because culture is always changing and being shaped by new factors that are introduced into a student's life. For this reason it is very important not to take any student's background for granted or to make assumptions about a student's culture based on ethnicity alone.

Therefore, the possible influences on culture are social variables, economic variables, age group variables (peers have a big influence on a student), and educational background variables. All of this will shape the culture of the ELL. Maria is likely to be influenced by her own family's living situation, what they are exposed to in their community and their family stability as well. Learning is not done in a vacuum or in an isolated chamber -- so everything that goes on inside the home and community will leave an impression on Maria too (Anderson, Garrison, 2014).

I do not predict that this ELL is at risk of fulfilling the Immigrant Paradox because she is very well motivated, very strongly supported by family and friends and teachers, and has already worked to overcome the achievement gap. I do not expect her to face any challenges associated with immigrants who are struggling to learn the L2 as she has already done very well towards becoming bilingual. The aspects of socialization and ESL instruction that are working well for this ELL include one-on-one time, oral and written instruction, free conversational time in class, and making friends easily. There are no aspects of either that are not working well for the ELL: she has shown great strength in everything expected of her.

No Struggles

What community and school personnel can do to boost the achievement of this ELL is to work with her in applying for scholarships and supporting her drive to reach the goals she has set for herself. The language competencies she has already gained have been obtained through the application of her human and social capital resources in her schools and in her community, which offers a variety of outlets for people to use both English and Spanish. Maria is surrounded by people who are just like her and who are willing to assimilate into the mainstream American culture while also maintaining solid moorings in their own culture and traditions.