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Starting from square 1
To help Latinos learn English, a program in Elgin hones their skills in Spanish first


By Mary Ann Fergus
Tribune staff reporter

December 3, 2006

Fermin Bibriescas is taking that crucial first step to learning English: He's boning up on his native Spanish.

Having completed only three years of schooling in Mexico, Bibriescas recently started working to improve his reading, writing and math skills in Spanish, thanks to a new Elgin program that focuses on literacy in that language.

Experts confirm that it's much easier for someone to learn a second language, such as English, when that person is already literate in his or her native language. There's a better chance, they say, of grasping the meaning of such concepts as nouns, verbs and punctuation.

Although English as a second language classes have exploded in Chicago and around the country, programs that address basic education and literacy in Spanish are much harder to come by but may be just as important.

The Latino Literacy Project in Elgin has 30 students and is one of just a handful in the state. The others are in Chicago.

"If I go driving now or walking, I am reading everything I see," Bibriescas said in Spanish during a recent class. "My mind is always working."

Bibriescas, 46, said he felt humiliated whenever he used the wrong Spanish word in conversation with friends or couldn't read from his church hymnal. He is the manager at a Crystal Lake flooring company, but he has had to rely on co-workers to check his math when submitting an order.

"There's a large population of people who come to this country without a basic education," says Jo Ann Armenta, a retired state police officer who helped establish the Elgin program. "Even if they try ESL, they will fail because they don't have the basic skills to understand."

Armenta used the adult education program at Instituto del Progreso Latino in Pilsen as a model. That organization has offered Spanish literacy classes for three decades and now averages about 125 students each year.



`A drop in the bucket'

Hundreds of its graduates have gone on to earn GEDs and become citizens, said Stephen Alderson, director of adult education at Instituto.

The program, he said, is only a "drop in the bucket" in the eradication of illiteracy among Spanish-speaking immigrants in the Chicago area.

"I think there's a tremendous need," Alderson said. "The academic success of the child is partially determined by the literacy level of the household."

The Elgin program, which is free, began last summer.

Classes are held Friday nights and Saturday mornings. After a break for the holidays, the program will resume in early January.

"Many times we have to turn off the lights because they don't want to leave," volunteer tutor Esther Zamudio said.

Most of the students, manual laborers and housewives in their 20s to early 60s, have not completed middle school in their native countries.

They've endured losses related to illiteracy.

Many have signed papers they never understood, lost job promotions and lived with lower self-confidence, program officials said.

Like Bibriescas, many were taken out of school to help their families make ends meet.

In Mexico's rural areas, tasks that require physical labor remain more valued than education.

The situation is similar to the era of the one-room schoolhouse in the United States, during which children often had to quit school to work in the fields, said Sylvia Puente, director of the Metropolitan Chicago Initiative for the University of Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies.

In 2000, about 47 percent of Mexican immigrants in the Chicago region had less than a 9th grade education, Puente said.



Guidelines developed in Mexico

The approach used by the Latino Literacy Project is based on a curriculum developed by the Mexican government. Put into effect in 2002 at more than 315 sites across the United States, including those in Elgin and Pilsen, it offered guidelines for teaching Spanish to native Spanish speakers.

The programs provide an extensive curriculum and training and a Web site for online learning. Students can earn their primary and secondary certificates from Mexico through the program and then go on to polish their English for the GED.

Armenta and Andrea Fiebig, director of Elgin Community College's ESL program, established the Latino Literacy Project at the Salvation Army's headquarters in Elgin.

Most of its $50,000 budget comes from the Salvation Army, a joint U.S.-Mexican education fund and local donations.

Five part-time staffers and several volunteers teach classes and provide child care.

Armenta's motivation came from personal experience. "My dad was illiterate, and I saw how he struggled in life," she said.

At a recent session, Isabel Escobar, 56, joyfully told her classmates in Spanish how her 7-year-old granddaughter recently marveled over her new reading skills.

"I never knew `a' from `s'," said Escobar, a McDonald's employee for 16 years.

After completing a 10 week-session, she was able to read aloud from the Bible and write her first letter, a short note to her 36-year-old son in Mexico. "I told him I loved him," she said.

In another room, Bibriescas' wife, Maria Tereza, worked on a practice test for her junior high school certificate from Mexico. She said she hopes her improved Spanish skills will better equip her to help the couple's four sons with schoolwork.

Fermin Bibriescas recently checked out a Spanish-language library book about Mexican history.

"I want to go to the high school level--and not just stay there," he said.

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mfergus@tribune.com
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