Word: nguyens
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Most Asians either have some knowledge of English before coming to the U.S. or quickly acquire the rudiments of an English vocabulary, often by methods bordering on the draconian. Son Nguyen, 18, a Vietnamese-born high school graduate in Houston, recalls that his brother-in-law required him to memorize one page of an English dictionary after school each day. More conventional teaching techniques are available throughout the U.S. in federally sponsored language programs. Those fortunate enough to have studied English at home can often make the transition easily. Cal Tech Senior Hojin Ahn, 24, a native South Korean, arrived...
...manage to resume careers with relative ease, though often in circumstances that they could never have imagined in their previous lives. Dr. Diem Duc Nguyen, 39, a South Vietnamese army surgeon who left Saigon on a refugee ship in 1975, tried working for a private ambulance service rescue squad in Florida but did not take to it. Then he learned of a medical retraining program in Nebraska and secured an interest-free loan to enter it in return for pledging to practice in rural Bridgeport (pop. 1,668) whose only two physicians were nearing retirement. Says Banker Eldon Evers...
Dressed in light cords and deck shoes, with sunglasses dangling from his sweatshirt, Son Nguyen, 18, seems like any other carefree high school graduate in Houston. "But if my mother saw me today, she would be shocked," confesses Son, who fled Ho Chi Minh City at age eight with a younger brother, his older sister and her husband. "I wouldn't be her boy anymore. I would be an American stranger." Still, within the two-story brick house he shares with eight other people, Son becomes a model Vietnamese youth, industrious, responsible, deferential. In that household, Vietnamese is spoken, Vietnamese...
Immigrants' children are sometimes agonizingly aware of the traits that mark them as foreign. Among these: their names. Jorge Orellana, 8, the son of immigrants from El Salvador, says classmates in a Chicago school taunted him with the words "Mexican kid." He now introduces himself as George. Son Nguyen's 16-year-old brother asks new acquaintances whether they want "my American or Vietnamese name." He is Tien to his family, Tim to others...
Highly motivated, the children of immigrants frequently feel guilty and disgraced when they do not excel at their studies. Le Giau expressed pride but Daughter Jennifer was ashamed when she came in second in a spelling contest. Son Nguyen, who plans to study engineering and then become a doctor, is still concerned that he has been infected by slack U.S. student habits. Reason: instead of straight A's, he pulled a few B's in his senior year in high school...