They speak the language

Lindsay Sandham

With the cultural melting pot that is Southern California comes a

multitude of languages and dialects, and some foreign-language

speakers find it difficult to function in the English-speaking

community.

Newport Beach residents Daryl Wilson and Michele Raffoni became

volunteers in the Newport Beach Public Library literacy program to

help ease the burden.

Established in 1986, the literacy program reaches out to residents

and workers throughout Orange County with one-on-one tutoring in the

areas of reading, writing, communication and basic computer skills.

“I’ve been a member of the Newport Beach Library since I was a

child,” Wilson said. “I am a former teacher of languages -- Spanish,

French and English -- so it was kind of natural when I retired to

take on volunteer work.”

Wilson, who taught languages to adults at colleges throughout

Orange County, has been volunteering as a literacy program tutor for

six years.

“Communication is a terrible problem in California these days,”

she said. “You can’t understand what people say to you, even if they

do speak some English, because they’re not speaking correctly, or

they don’t have the right accent. I thought if I was having trouble,

then probably a lot of people are, so there was a need for some way

to facilitate communi- cation in English.”

Raffoni, who was a teacher in Los Alamitos before she retired two

years ago, knew Wilson from the gym and heard about the library

program through her.

Because the literacy program attempts to reach so many people in a

one-on-one setting, both Raffoni and Wilson said they felt the need

for a similar program that could accommodate even more individuals.

So they, along with four other volunteer tutors, started a Monday

night literacy program at Back Bay and Monte Vista high schools,

where prospective students can show up anytime in a three-hour window

to receive tutoring assistance with English reading, writing and

communi- cations skills.

The program is free because of funding from the Newport Beach

Sunrise Rotary Club.

Raffoni said they can help students with pretty much anything,

such as resumes or GED tests. Since there are six teachers available,

students rotate among them so they can experience different tutoring

styles, she said.

Wilson has also taught conversation classes of eight to 12

students through the library literacy program and said that small

groups are necessary when teaching in-depth English skills.

“What they’re learning is to go in-depth into the language and

repeat and repeat and repeat and get a kind of automatic reflex, and

that takes working with individuals, and it takes working with a

small group and letting people work with each other,” she said.

Raffoni said many of their students have children in school and

are eager to learn English in order to communicate with them.

“There’s two kinds of people,” she said. “Some that really and

truly want to learn for their children’s sake and only speak English

as much as they can, and there are others that come to class, learn

only a little bit of English and then go back home and speak only

Spanish or another language.”

However, the second type are few and far between in their classes,

she said.

Students say they are grateful for the assistance they receive at

the tutoring sessions, Wilson said, but it does have its benefits for

the volunteers as well.

“It keeps us off the street,” she said.