Citizenship in 'Jeopardy'
Archived article from Dec 4, 1998
By Douglas Frank
Sandra Colie had been conducting classes for several years in English as a second language (ESL), basic skills and bilingual safety training in her job as workplace educator and coordinator for Facilities Maintenance and Operations.
But some Rutgers employees were asking for more. Coming from other countries, they wanted to become American citizens and knew they would have to answer several questions about American history and government as part of the process. The questions are drawn from 100 sample questions that the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service hands out to those who apply for citizenship.
"People were saying: 'We really need some help with this,'" she recalls. "The INS sends them a list of possible questions to be asked in English. And then they have to study themselves. They are really on their own."
Responding to their suggestions, Colie decided to do something to help and began making phone calls to corporations, other universities and private learning centers to see whether any citizenship courses were available to which she could refer Rutgers employees.
"I called many agencies and couldn't find a class anywhere near our area at all. There were none, so I decided to create our own," she said.
The result is now a regular course for employees that had 20 students in two sessions last year. A dozen more potential citizens have been taking the hour-and-a-half class every Friday for eight weeks this fall.
The students have been in the country at least five years and are in various stages of citizenship process. They can sign up for the classes once they have made their application for citizenship.
Colie and course instructor Barbara Meyer devised a clever way of covering the questions in a variation of the popular TV game-show format "Jeopardy."
The questions are written on the board in various categories and covered with paper. The class is divided in half and each student gets a chance to answer the questions. The questions are valued from $100 to $400. The results are tallied, and the competition is often brisk.
Topics in one game segment included presidents, national government, Bill of Rights, elections and INS. The last contains "red flag" things immigrants need to know about or solve before going for citizenship.
"The game format is an ideal way for the students to learn the material," says Colie. "First, it's fun, and more importantly, the information is organized in categories, making it easier to study and remember." The questions from the INS are listed randomly.
Some of the questions are easy, the kind most Americans can remember from school; others can be daunting even for the native-born.
Sometimes the non-native speakers, most of whom speak Spanish, encounter a word they aren't familiar with. Then Meyer explains carefully in English until she feels the students understand. She is aided in the class by three young women who are bilingual Rutgers students and who volunteer their time to assist.
The class is important to people like Luis Torres, who works with facilities at Busch-Livingston. He came to the United States from the Dominican Republic in 1981 and applied for citizenship about a year and a half ago. In a mix of Spanish and English, he said that it is much easier to learn from a class than on his own. He has gotten into the spirit of learning so well that when he acquired a Spanish translation of the questions, he brought it in to share with his classmates.
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