ESL students speak in future tense

Juli Salatino’s third-period class is a bit different from her others.

Her portable classroom at Davis High School, generally filled with teenagers learning Spanish, is instead occupied by a variety of students working through English verbs and sentence structure.

This is her English as a Second Language, or ESL, class. And, for these non-native English-speakers, it’s extremely important.

“We don’t know anything about this country,” Liliana Saénz says in English, her second language. The 20-year-old native Spanish speaker recently came to the United States from Mexico. “We have a different culture and language, but ESL class helps us to learn more.”

Also speaking in English, her second language, fellow classmate and native Spanish speaker, 21-year-old Adriana Carranza, says the ESL class is important so “we can learn the language and have a better future.”

ESL 3, however, is only one period, leaving five more classes for Saénz and Carranza to tackle in their second language.

“At first, they start with two ESL classes with limited core classes like art and P.E.,” their teacher explains. “Then, they will move into classes that require more cognitive skills, like math, science and social studies. By ESL 3, though, they are completely mainstreamed.”

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