Advanced Immigration 2025-2026

By FLORA ADAIR

The first time I held a conversation in Spanish was while walking by Plaza de Espana in the late September sun with my little host sister Rebeca. I had been in Spain for five weeks, but she still had to tug me along with her hands because I couldn’t understand her foreign directions. We had picked up lunch from the grocery store, and Rebeca was rambling while I followed her home. That afternoon, she was complaining about a middle school friend, but instead of nodding along in defeat, her words translated into meaning. For the first time, her slow and patient sentences registered in my mind. I was able to speak back, to validate her frustration instead of just nodding in support. I think that was the best part of understanding for me: responding back and showing Rebeca my mind was truly there in the plaza with her.

Three weeks later, I felt like I was starting over in line for a rollercoaster. I had been gaining confidence through dinnertime conversations with my host mom and Spanish class, but surrounded by a group of teenagers, my self-belief evaporated. I was at the fair with my three host sisters and their friends. Their ages ranged from eleven to fourteen, but I still felt like the smallest person there. Anything I thought I knew about Spanish I was now unsure about, as the girls around me threw out words I had heard or seen in class. I spent the day in the back of the group, wondering if I would ever learn the language well enough to fit in, but laughing along as if I already had. 

Tian Tian, a Cate freshman who recently moved from Beijing to California, says that even though she is bilingual, sometimes she laughs along too. Tian Tian Sun is an adept speaker of both Mandarin and English, able to switch seamlessly between the two languages; I’ve seen her do this myself, whether it’s talking in the dining hall or sending a voice note on her phone after seminar class, but even with this adaptability, slang acts as a barrier of assimilation for her. When Tian Tian first arrived at Cate she was surprised to find that colloquial language in the dorm sounded different from her classes at international school back home. 

Tian Tian’s experience of assimilation highlights the discrepancies that many English learners see between their English classes and real-life conversation. An article on linguistic assimilation in child immigrants explains, “Typically sequential bilingual children who learned English as a second language have a stronger school related vocabulary in English and a stronger home vocabulary in their second language.” Whether an immigrant is a child or an older adult, non-English speakers typically master a more academic understanding of the foreign language first. Even immigrants who have spent years studying the English language in their country of origin struggle with “home vocabulary” or colloquial language when they arrive in America. This is because while English classes can teach an overarching, grammatically correct form of the language, they can’t account for the regional and constantly evolving vocabulary that speakers face everyday. Mrs. Song spent years learning English in school before she moved to America at 25; she had taken standardized tests in the English language, but still struggled to speak when she arrived in the country. Mrs. Song explained, “The first English word I learned after arriving in America was ‘what’s up’. It’s such a common word here, but I had never heard it in any of my English classes before. It didn’t make sense at first.” Mrs. Song, as well as other immigrants who hadn’t experienced casual conversation, had to find ways to supplement their language learning. Listening to native speakers converse on a day to day basis is a helpful way to break down the barrier of colloquial language assimilation, and it’s one of Mrs. Song’s favorite parts of being on duty in Bothin. She gets to learn words like “diva” or “slay”, that usually only appear in the vocabulary of teenagers; phrases that she otherwise wouldn’t hear in her daily routine. When I lived in Spain, I adapted a practice similar to Mrs. Song’s: making the living room my study space, so that I could listen to my host mom calling her sister, or my host siblings fighting over toys while I worked. This habit helped me pick up casual usage of the language much quicker. Kiy Barry also used his relationships with native Spanish speakers to absorb the language. His young friends would speak a casual form of Spanish around him, making the language more accessible to him while living in Spain.      

Not every immigrant has the privilege of overcoming the de facto barrier of casual linguistic assimilation, even after arriving in the country. A strict routine or other obstacles can limit one’s access to native English speakers, but there are still other ways to assimilate: English TV shows are widely viewed by non-native speakers both inside and outside the United States. An article expounds, “Seasons of television have served as de facto English tutors to people around the world. Friends, that innocuous, imminently watchable cultural touchstone is “a near perfect-amalgam of easy-to-understand English and real-life scenarios that feel familiar even to people who live worlds away.”. While English is typically first introduced in a classroom setting, this practice is changing with the rise of technology and social media. Young teenagers, such as Tian Tian, use social media apps to accelerate their fluency outside of the classroom, while older learners may use television or streaming services to pick up more casual vocabulary. What each of these methods makes clear, however, is that there is not one way to gain social fluency in a language. They only illustrate that the de facto barrier of colloquial conversation cannot be overcome by simply sitting in a classroom. It is challenged every day by learning in the real world, highlighting the resilience and adaptability of the immigrant experience.