Demand For English Doubles In A Year

Over the past several years, programs in English as a second language, offered on the East End by the Literacy Volunteers of America, the Suffolk County Board of Cooperative Educational Services, and Southampton College, have been besieged by an ever-growing demand.

This year, though, the flood has become a deluge - each program's enrollment is at least double last year's.

Most of the students are recent immigrants, mainly from Latin America but also from Asia and the Caribbean. The common thread is the need for survival English - the rudimentary skills that can get a person a cup of coffee, a ride on the bus, a job.

Waiting Lists

Close to 80 students are learning English at the college, including, noted Laura Lyons, director of its continuing education program, a growing number of Turkish nationals.

Between Literacy Volunteers, which offers free tutoring, and the adult education classes held at BOCES, also free, there are about 200 students and 35 teachers in East Hampton alone. Another 150 students are on waiting lists.

Altogether, across the five East End towns, Literacy Volunteers has some 200 tutors working with nearly twice as many students.

No Dearth Of Students

When Donna Frey became the group's Suffolk coordinator three years ago, there were five or six tutors and no more than two dozen students in East Hampton Town.

This year, 13 new tutors from Montauk signed on.

"I used to cringe when I got applications from Montauk and East Hampton," said Ms. Frey, "because I knew it would be months before we could serve them."

While the effort to recruit tutors and teachers never ends, there is little need to advertise for students. "One comes and before you know it the entire family and all their friends are signing up," said Ms. Frey.

The Busiest Tutor

Robert Schmitz, a retired insurance executive and art gallery owner who lives on Napeague, holds the Literacy Volunteers record for busiest tutor on the East End - more than 1,000 hours spent with more than 20 students since he began two years ago.

Most of Mr. Schmitz's students are Latino. He goes to the motels and restaurants where many work, encouraged by the owners to tutor there during off-hours. At the Huntting Inn, for example, he tutored six Colombians for a year.

Though the Literacy Volunteers mission is to help adults, Mr. Schmitz said he had his own way of doing things. One of his prize students, Milena Barrera, was 12 when she arrived from Chile, speaking no English.

Now, her tutor said proudly, she is fluent in the language and has a scholarship to Bridgehampton's Hayground School.

Sessions At Chen's

Three afternoons a week, after school lets out and before the dinner rush, he goes to Chen's Garden, a Chinese takeout shop on Pantigo Road in East Hampton, where he helps Jean, 21, John, 16, and Amy Chen, 18, improve their language and survival skills.

He began with tapes and books from Literacy Volunteers that translate Chinese to English but has since moved on.

"He helps us with everything. Pronunciation, grammar, driving," said Jean, who was given driving lessons last summer.

The Chen children came to the United States about a year ago. Amy Chen said they heard about Mr. Schmitz from some Spanish-speaking customers.

BOCES Adds Classes

This year, there are 125 students in four BOCES classes held at night in East Hampton High School and one daytime class at the East Hampton Presbyterian Church. There were three classes last year, said Judy Kahn, the program coordinator.

BOCES would need three or four more teachers to exhaust its waiting list of students, she said.

For Literacy Volunteers, the biggest problem is finding places for tutors and students to work together. The organization, with 399 affiliates nationwide, discourages tutors from using their homes, citing potential liability.

A Place To Meet

They rely instead mostly on libraries, but also on schools and churches, to provide a quiet corner with a table and two chairs. Here, the Montauk Library and the John Jermain Library in Sag Harbor have each offered a regular nighttime meeting place.

Ms. Frey said she once called every church in town asking for the same, but not one, she said, returned her call.

"It's frustrating. We have so many more tutors now - not enough to meet the demand entirely, but it really helps - and then it takes weeks to find them a place."

One tutor and a student were meeting regularly in a park, but it got too cold, she said.

At Senior Center

As a result, Literacy Volunteers formed a partnership a few years ago with the East Hampton Town Senior Citizens Center, providing trained tutors while the town provided a room, transportation for students who needed it, and day care for those with small children.

Joy and Richard Lupoletti, a retired elementary school teacher and a retired librarian who live in East Hampton, answered an ad for volunteers and became the first to tutor there.

Last year, Doris Charney, a retired business owner from Sagaponack, had 10 students coming to the Senior Center, most of them mothers of small children.

Rewards

"We felt it was giveback time. Life has been good to us and we wanted to help someone else," said Mrs. Lupoletti.

"This has turned out to be one of the most rewarding things we have ever done. These students are motivated, otherwise they wouldn't have searched us out, and any teacher will tell you it's the best to teach a motivated student."

Mr. and Mrs. Lupoletti work two hours a week with each of three or four students, she with beginners and he on the intermediate level.

"We're more than just tutors. We become mentors for them in this country," she said.

Paulina Bahamondes, a single mother from Chile, has been studying with Mr. Lupoletti for nearly six months.

Seeking Fluency

She has conquered survival English and found a job working in the kitchen at the Senior Center, but wants to be fluent.

She said she would like an American college degree so she can "someday be in my own profession."

Ms. Bahamondes was a social worker in Chile before emigrating in 1987.

All the teachers and tutors interviewed said they benefited as much from the program as the students, perhaps more. They are invited to christenings and weddings, asked to help smooth out immigration difficulties, and otherwise share in their students' lives.

Like Family

"They make me feel like family. I wish my own children showed me such respect and did everything I told them to," laughed Mrs. Charney.

The Chen family affectionately calls Mr. Schmitz "Bobu." Two Latino students have named him the padrino, - a sort of godfather - of their wedding.

"Nobody wants to let you go," he said. "You become like family. But when they can speak well enough, I try to discharge them to BOCES."

"A Blessing"

Donna Milazzo, a Sag Harbor resident and certified E.S.L. teacher who has been leading BOCES classes in East Hampton for three years, called the experience "a blessing."

Nearly all her students are Latino, most from Ecuador, "and they're taught to treat the teacher as they would their mother, with respect and appreciation."

"In a lot of adult programs, you have people who are going for their last-chance life skills, and they come with a lot of social issues that are acted out in class," she said. "I don't see that in E.S.L. They come to learn English. It's really wonderful."

Life Skills

Instructors in both the L.V.A. and BOCES programs allow their students to direct the classes by asking for help with Motor Vehicle Department regulations, applying for a job, or other practical matters.

"They don't need spelling or punctuation as much as they need to know how to answer the phone, talk to their boss, ask for a cup of coffee in a deli, find housing, deal with Motor Vehicles, get information about citizenship classes, find a good doctor for their children," said Ms. Milazzo.

She offers help with all that through role-playing and conversational exercises: "You're going to lose them if you just ram punctuation down their throats," she said, "and the degree to which they know their first language will determine how well they learn a second one."

Changed Lives

Doris Charney helped one student study for his citizenship test by recording the curriculum on a cassette tape he could play in his car. He passed.

Another man, she said, "was depressed because he lost his job. The Hispanics, they're not really accepted here, and their work is so seasonal. Learning English gave him a little confidence and now he has his own painting business, a beeper, some employees. He's very sophisticated now."

Mrs. Charney used to run a window-treatment business with her husband. "I feel I really should have been a teacher," she said. "My first student, Luz, used to tell everybody I was her angel. I feel I really changed her life."