Teaching Second Generation Romanian Immigrants in the Advanced English Module Groups
Teaching Second Generation Romanian Immigrants in the Advanced English Module Groups

Summary/Abstract: After the 1989 Revolution, as a country in transition from a socialist to a capitalist economy and a free market, Romania has experienced frequent social changes resulting in mass migration to other European states or to the United States and Canada. The children of these Romanian immigrants, some of them with double or triple citizenship return to their parents' home country to study medicine in the English or French language modules now available at most Romanian medical schools. Teaching Romanian to these second generation immigrants has proved to be no easy task, taking into consideration the vastly different cultural backgrounds of the participants and their heterogeneous language skills. Most of them come from countries of the European Union or from the US and Canada. Starting with pronunciation and spelling and ending with an often-impaired capacity to read and write fluently and correctly, the learning process is a difficult one for these multilingual students. Accordingly, the teacher has to become familiar with a host of different cultural backgrounds and resort to teaching strategies which are both inclusive and more specific, adapted to the students' different learning styles. My paper intends to provide an analysis of the makeup of these international groups, highlight the challenges that may arise in the teaching process and offer some suggestions for improving teacher as well as student performance.

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