Elementary and Secondary ESL programs within BC

Hey Minjeong and Midas, Both of you bring up very valid points regarding this idea. In regards to Minjeong's concerns, it would most definitely be necessary to survey immigrants who did not take part in any ESL programs. That way, it becomes possible to measure the extent of the effect that ESL programs have on immigrant's lives in general. Questions such as "how has the ability to communicate in english affected your level of success within job opportunities in BC?" would initially allow us to deduce the level of importance that english has in general on job opportunities for immigrants, and follow up questions assessing the role of ESL in contributing to their current level of english proficiency would then allow us to deduce the overall impact that ESL has on all immigrants in terms of job opportunities. In addition, ESL only represents one of the many ways that immigrants could learn english. Enrolling in private classes, tutoring, or even self-study could be potential factors that we should consider. As for your second concern, I think we can solve this issue by surveying immigrants in terms of the overall level of "success" that they have experienced in BC, with or without ESL programs, and see if those who had participated in ESL faired more favorably.

As for Midas, it seems I have confounded my research focus. I am interested in measuring the effect of an immigrant's english proficiency level on their level of "success" within job opportunities in BC. I am also interested in seeing how effective government programs (hence ESL) are in helping immigrants learn english. It would seem pretty straightforward to assume that the better english one speaks in a predominantly english speaking society, the better one's job opportunities are. However, I have several concerns of my own regarding this assumption. Firstly, it would be necessary to attribute values to what we consider a "standard english proficiency"; the ability to communicate does not necessarily mean the ability to articulate. Such factors will come into play when considering job opportunities (interviews by potential employers and such). Therefore, it would also be necessary to measure the english proficiency level in the people we survey (I admit this could be difficult). As for the level of success, I think that a question like "How important was english for you in job seeking?" would allow us to qualitatively measure each individual's perceived level of importance that english had, and allow us to see whether the premise that better english leads to more jobs is true. If it is true (which I personally think it is), additional questions asking how the respondent learned english ("Did you participate in any public school funded programs whose aim was to teach english?") could then allow us to extrapolate the effectiveness in governmental programs that aimed to assimilate immigrants into BC's society. If governmental programs like ESL significantly helped immigrants in learning english, and higher levels of english proficiency was empirically linked to higher levels of job opportunities, then we can essentially gauge how good a job the BC government is doing to help immigrants "settle" into society.

My only concern with your suggestion of measuring the time in which a respondent has learned english is the fact that 1) people learn english at different speeds (motivation, natural mental capabilities, etc) and 2) there are varying levels of education (someone taking ESL at school compared to someone taking ESL at school AND hiring a private tutor/enrolling in weekend classes would achieve different results at the end of the year)

What do you think?