ELL News Headlines

For Claudio Galvan, one of the more difficult parts of learning English is that lots of things are backward.
In Spanish, he explained, American cheese would be said "queso Americano." Remembering that adjectives come before the nouns in English takes some getting used to. Mr. Galvan is getting free help from the Scranton Council of Literacy Advance, better known as SCOLA Volunteers for Literacy, a nonprofit group that helps people learn to read. Twice a week, he and fellow student Vincente Ayala attend a class led by volunteer tutor Don Noll.

If you don't speak Spanish, Miami really can feel like a foreign country. In any restaurant, the conversation at the next table is more likely to be in Spanish than English. And Miami's population is only 65 percent Hispanic. El Paso is 76 percent Latino. Flushing, N.Y., is 60 percent immigrant, mainly Chinese. Chinatowns and Little Italys have long been part of our urban landscape, but would it be all right to have entire U.S. cities where most people spoke and did business in Chinese, Spanish or even Arabic? Are too many Third World, non-English-speaking immigrants destroying our national identity?

Standing in front of four bulletin boards covered in pictures of every child he's delivered, Dr. William Moors can recall details of each one, no matter how much time has passed. In his 10 years with Rivanna Family Medicine, Moors, who is fluent in Spanish, has become the go-to doctor for local Hispanic residents who don't speak English.