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Acculturation and an ESL program: a service learning project.

Article Excerpt
The author describes and evaluates her experience participating in a service-learning project in a Human Diversity course designed to foster multicultural competence in clinical psychology doctoral trainees. The project took place at an English as a Second Language (ESL) program that offered an array of services, including ESL courses and individual tutors. The author had the opportunity to examine the workings of a successful multicultural organization, engage in an individual cross-cultural relationship, and examine her own cultural identity, biases, beliefs and attitudes within the framework of an ongoing relationship. Utilizing John Berry's (2001) theory of acculturation, the author evaluates the workings of the ESL program, as well as her own work as a tutor, acknowledging integration and multiculturalism as the ideal outcomes of cross-cultural contact.

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The demographics of our communities are changing, making multicultural experience and training essential for future psychologists--a largely white, European-American group (Arredondo, 2003; Daniels, Roysircar, Abeles, & Boyd, 2004). One means of facilitating greater multicultural sensitivity and cultural self-awareness in future psychologists is through service learning projects that involve clinical psychology students in multicultural interactions, allowing them to (a) build multicultural relationships, (b) learn about different cultures and issues of acculturation and immigration, and (c) learn about themselves as cultural beings--how their own beliefs, biases, attitudes impact their work (Roysircar, 2003).

As a student in a clinical psychology doctoral program, I participated in a service learning project through Dover Adult Learning Center's (2004) (DALC) Strafford County Adult Tutorial Program in Dover, New Hampshire. The project involved contact with various components of the English as a Second Language (ESL) program, with a focus on tutoring an ESL student. I had the opportunity to examine the workings of a successful multicultural organization, engage in an individual cross-cultural relationship, and examine my own cultural identity, biases, beliefs and attitudes within the framework of an ongoing relationship. Utilizing the work of Berry (2001) in particular, this article focuses on how issues of acculturation impact program development, and the experience of individual learners and helpers in the ESL environment.

dover adult learning center's esl programs

In 2003, DALC (http://www.dalc-online.org) worked with over 200 individuals from 32 different countries in their ESL classes and tutorial program. DALC offers three levels of ESL courses, ESL courses in the workplace, and individual tutors in addition to, or instead of, the ESL classes. All ESL services are free with the exception of the...