Fifty years ago, Byongman Lee could not have imagined that he would be sitting in the Secaucus Public Library learning to refine his English in the year 2000. Back then, he was too busy making his way south, down the cold rugged terrain from North Korea to South Korea, his possessions on his back, his family clinging to his side. Yet one of his motivations, he said, for wanting to read and write better English is as a tribute to how free he has felt since arriving finally in the United States 25 years ago. Don Roberts, who has been tutoring Lee in English for the last year and half, said part of the reward for his volunteer efforts has been the cultural exchange he had had with Lee, including hearing stories about Lee’s journey to freedom. Roberts is among 28 volunteers who are working with people in Secaucus library to help others learn to read and write, and in this case, it has resulted in a mutually-rewarding friendship. “We hit it off right away,” Roberts said. “We’re only a few years apart in age, but we find so many things to talk about.” Talk, Roberts said, often leads to reading and better literacy. Lee, who has lived in the United States for 25 years, decided when he retired in Nov. 1997 that he wanted to learn to read English. “I live in this country for a long time and it is hard for a first generation like me to learn English,” he said. “People who do not read and write English here find it hard to make a living.” Lee did make a living here, though, running a small retail business for 18.5 years in the lobby of a commercial building near Times Square in Manhattan. Lee, a resident of Harmon Cove, said he heard about the literacy program in Secaucus while watching the town’s public access television station. He applied to the library, but he didn’t think he would get into the program at first. “The lady said I speak pretty good English already,” Lee said. “I told her I wanted to speak better and maybe write better.” Katherine Steffens, director of the Secaucus Public library, said when people request a tutor, she and the staff try to match that person up with someone compatible. “Every student is different,” she said. “Every student has a different goal. Some goals are easily-achieved. We have had some students here for several years, and others come and go within months.” Making word lists Oddly enough, Lee immigrated to Colombia, South America in his first attempt to put down roots, and he started to learn Spanish as his second language. That was in 1972. But business opportunities were limited there, and he and his family didn’t particularly like the place, so they moved to America a year later. But Lee had been in America before. He came over to the United States in 1958 for a year as part of a Department of Defense program. He was a military assistant while serving in the Korean army. He said this experience gave Lee a head start when it came to learning the English language. “It is why I speak better English than most first-generation,” he said. Lee said he has to respect Don for giving up valuable time to tutor, and therefore makes certain that he is prepared for the lessons. As part of the weekly routine, Lee reads and develops lists of words, writing down their meaning as he reads. He said building a better vocabulary is slow business, and sometimes, he finds the list of words he doesn’t know very long. “Sometimes I only remember one or two of the words off each list later,” he said. Roberts said determining the meaning and use of individual words makes up a great part of the lesson. While Roberts does not speak Korean, he and Lee have come to realize that the English-Korean dictionary they use isn’t always accurate, and their talk is often over what the right word is in a given situation. “Sometimes we’ll talk about the use of a word for 15 or 20 minutes,” Roberts said. Lee will ask if this or that is a common word, and what the common meaning is, and Roberts will tell him. Most of the words Roberts knows, but sometimes Lee comes up with words Roberts doesn’t know. Both men use the magazine section of the Sunday New York Times as their text. Lee said the weekly sessions allow him to step out of his culture and “go mainstream,” speaking one on one with someone to whom English is the regular language At home and in his own community, Lee is surrounded by Korean newspapers and television programs, and his friends generally speak Korean. This is less true for the up-and-coming generation, and Lee said one reason he wants to learn good English is in order to speak to his grandchildren. What is literacy? A definition of literacy is illusive and political. Some groups define illiteracy as the inability to read at all. Others have developed a kind of sliding scale, creating levels of literacy. The 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey, one of the most significant studies on the subject in the 1990s, defined it as the ability to use a language to function in a society. The 1992 survey by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics estimated that about 21 percent of the adult population – more than 40 million Americans over the age of 16 – had only rudimentary reading and writing skills. They can pick out facts in a newspaper, but can’t write a letter. The New Jersey Commission on Higher Education in 1996 claimed that more than 1.4 million residents in the state fail to meet minimum literary requirements. In the mid 1990s, Hudson County showed that 37 percent of residents had trouble reading, and that 25 percent lacked a high school diploma. The Secaucus library’s program was started in the early 1990s with the help of the Secaucus Rotary Club (whose mission was to improve conditions within the community, especially literacy) and the New Jersey chapter of the Literacy Volunteers of America. “Rotary, originally, came to us to start program,” Library Director Katherine Steffens said. Libraries across the nation provide the most accessible programs to the public, and the New Jersey chapter of the Literacy Volunteers of America could only help about 6,000 individuals in 1999 out of the million people it estimates in New Jersey who read below a fifth grade level. Even in Secaucus, the program can’t keep up with the demand. “Right now we have 28 students from Secaucus and eight student out of town on our waiting lists,” Steffens said. “We have 24 tutors on our lists. Some of these are taking breaks or inactive, but I may have to tap them, the need is so great.” Steffens even enlisted her mother into the effort. “An hour a week is all we ask for,” she said. “Though most of our tutors give more than that.” Steffens said, “We try to match student to tutor, as far as personality and level of experience are concerned. We also match them up by when they are available to meet in the library.” For more information, call Steffens at 330-3083.
Our Digital Archive from 2000 – 2016
