LANGUAGES SPOKEN
AT HOME IN WAYNE*
SPEAK ONLY ENGLISH:
38,418 (73.2 percent)
SPEAK SPANISH:
4,139 (7.9 percent)
SPEAK OTHER INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES:
5,564 (10.6 percent)
SPEAK ASIAN AND PACIFIC ISLANDS LANGUAGES:
2,963 (5.6 percent)
SPEAK OTHER LANGUAGES:
1,403 (2.7 percent)
during the two-hour session.
As Seol discussed his move out
of the house he had rented into a
permanent home, Grabowsky jotted
the phrases, “put down roots” and
“settle down,” on the whiteboard.
“My philosophy is, if you learned one
word in class today, then you learned
a lot,” Grabowsky says. “And, many
of them learn more than one word.”
*Source: 52,487 surveyed by
U.S. Census Bureau, 2012-2016
(Five-year estimate, most recent data available)
Meeting a growing
demand
Doreen Shoba, the library’s assis-
tant director and coordinator of its
ESL program, says that demand for
classes has grown substantially since
they were offered for the first time in
2005. She says that the program
started with 18 students and 10
tutors, and that it now boasts 68
students and 32 tutors. She also
attributes the growth of the library’s
ESL program to the township’s diver-
sity and ever-shifting demographics.
S he says that the native tongue of
most students is Arabic.
She points out that there is a need
for so many tutors because most stu-
dents desire one-on-one instruction.
Group sessions run every day,
except Sunday and Wednesday.
Participation is free for students; the
cost for materials is covered by the
Friends of the Wayne Public Library.
“We’ve had so many successes,”
says Shoba, who hails from South
Africa, and whose first lan-
guage is Zulu. She says
that a turning point
HOW TO SIGN UP:
To register as a student or
tutor for the ESL program
at the Wayne Public Library,
contact Assistant Library
Director Doreen Shoba at
(973) 694-4272, ext. 5102, or at
[email protected].
Interested students will be asked
to schedule an appointment for a
baseline evaluation of their ability
to speak English. Prospective tutors
will be interviewed. Registration
forms for students and tutors are
available on the library’s website,
at waynepubliclibrary.org.
MAKING CONNECTIONS (Top) Assistant
Library Director Doreen Shoba gives Garza
Should Morovati formerly of Iran, a hug; (above)
Dave Seol talks with Yaireth Cistancho.
for the program came in 2011, when
the library opted to secede from
Literacy Volunteers of America Inc.
That move was critical because it
significantly cut down on regulations
the program had to follow, she says.
One such rule obligated tutors to
take attendance of their students. That
is not expected of ESL teachers at the
Wayne library, she says. Shoba says
she believes the Wayne library’s ESL
program is “by far” the biggest in
terms of enrollment in Passaic County,
and that its students live throughout
North Jersey; the library
does not ask about their
residency.
The relative laxity of the
program seems to have engendered
a fun atmosphere for learning.
Grabowsky’s students play a game
each session in which one of them
uses English to describe a word
written on an index card until anoth-
er correctly guesses what it is. The
game often results in an uproar of
laughter, especially when a certain
word eludes the entire class: What
is a special type of shoe some
athletes might wear on ice?
On that day, the
students learned at
least two new
words in class. n