CRYSTAL LAKE, Ill. — Leticia Castanon concentrated on the difference between the words “must” and “should” scribbled on a white board in a McHenry County College classroom.
If she wants to master the English language, she should study, the 45-year-old wife and mother thought.
And if she wants to get a job that pays better than her current gig in fast food, Castanon, a Mexican immigrant, told herself she must learn English.
“I need it to better understand people,” Castanon said. “I started five or six years ago learning English.”
There are four people in Castanon’s English as a Second Language course at McHenry County College, and more than 540 in all ESL classes college-wide, school enrollment data shows.
Just shy of 87 percent of students enrolled in ESL classes are Hispanic. These students are among a growing group of Hispanics trudging through the nuances of the English language.
A recent study from the Pew Research Center shows a record 32 million Hispanics living in the United States speak English proficiently. http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/05/12/english-proficiency-on-the-rise-among-latinos/
English-speaking Hispanics accounted for 68 percent of the Hispanic population in 2013, the study showed, up from 59 percent in 2000.
The study attributes the increase to the number of U.S.-born Hispanics, a growing segment of the Hispanic population.
In 2013, there were nearly twice as many U.S.-born Hispanics as there were foreign-born, 35 million to 19 million, respectively. U.S.-born Hispanics also have a median age of half that of foreign-born Hispanics.
Castanon is a living example of that statistic. Immigrating from Mexico in 2002, she lives in Woodstock with her husband and her son, Alan, 12.
They speak Spanish at home, but Castanon said she also sometimes gets informal English lessons from her son.
“He’s up there,” she said. “He is my teacher.”
