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A Week Between Languages

Compare an original immigration story with a historical account of English learning in early twentieth-century American cities.

Grade 7ELAInteractive · Printable

Aligned toRL.7.9

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What’s included

Single worksheet
Auto-graded online
1 Common Core standard
Printable answer key
13 questions
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Details

Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 7
Subject: ELA
Question types: Multiple choice, Circle the answer, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students compare a fictional immigrant’s language-learning experience with a historical account.
Students identify historical details that fiction preserves, invents, or compresses.
Students support comparisons with specific evidence from both texts.

How to use

Read both texts before answering. Have students distinguish an invented detail from a historical contradiction and support comparisons with evidence.

Curriculum

Common Core standard covered

RL.7.9

Compare a fictional portrayal of a time, place, or character with a historical account to see how fiction uses or changes history.

Preview

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Name Date

A Week Between Languages

Compare an immigrant’s fictional experience with a historical account.

Read both texts

Text A is historical fiction with invented characters and events. Text B is an original historical overview, not an eyewitness account.

Text A: Seven Evenings

1On Monday in 1910, fourteen-year-old Rosina carried her father’s lunch through their New York neighborhood. Six months earlier, they had left Italy. Now she recognized streets by shop windows, not street names. At the doorway of a public school, a woman offered her a notice. Rosina recognized one English word: evening. The woman pointed upstairs and pretended to write. Rosina tucked the notice beside the lunch.

2Her father returned from the clothing workshop with stiff fingers. When Rosina showed him the paper, he shook his head. “Tonight they need me late.” She wanted to fold the notice away, but he stopped her. “I cannot go. That is not the same as saying you cannot.” Rosina went upstairs alone that evening, rehearsing the sound of her name.

3In the classroom, adults occupied most of the desks. The teacher held up a cup, then wrote its name. Rosina copied the letters. Beside her, a woman quietly repeated each sound. When Rosina answered a question incorrectly, she stared at her notebook. The woman slid the cup toward her. “Again,” she said, smiling. Rosina tried once more.

4Each night that week, Rosina returned. On Thursday, she asked a shopkeeper a question without pointing. On Friday, she understood a long conversation between two neighbors. By Sunday, she could follow an entire newspaper article and explain it in English without stopping to search for words. The language that had seemed like a locked door on Monday now opened easily.

5At supper, her father placed a folded newspaper beside her plate. Rosina began explaining an article. He listened, then asked her to slow down. She noticed the dark threads caught in his cuffs and remembered the empty desk beside hers. She set the newspaper aside and brought two cups to the table. “We can begin here,” she said. Her father repeated the word after her. This time, Rosina waited while someone else searched for a sound.

Text B: Learning English After Arrival

1During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many immigrants settled in American cities, including New York. They arrived with different languages, levels of schooling, and work experience. Some already knew English; others began learning it after arrival. Their experiences did not follow one schedule. Age, previous education, employment, and contact with English speakers could all affect the opportunities available to a newcomer.

2Public schools in cities such as New York offered evening instruction that included English classes for immigrants. Settlement houses and other community organizations also provided lessons. Such classes could serve people who worked during the day. Teachers might connect spoken words with familiar objects, written words, and practical situations. Instruction and materials varied, and a classroom could include learners whose ages and educational backgrounds differed considerably.

3An available class did not mean that everyone could attend regularly. Long or changing work hours could prevent a person from reaching a lesson. Tiredness, household duties, and responsibility for younger relatives could create additional obstacles. Some learners attended when they could rather than following an uninterrupted schedule. A missed lesson therefore did not necessarily show a lack of interest in learning English. Opportunity depended partly on circumstances beyond a learner’s control.

4Learning also happened outside classrooms. Newcomers encountered English in shops, workplaces, streets, and newspapers. Relatives and neighbors sometimes helped one another understand unfamiliar words or messages. At the same time, immigrant communities continued using their home languages in conversation and in community life. Learning English did not require every family to abandon the language it had brought to the United States.

5Progress differed from person to person. A learner might master a practiced question before understanding an unfamiliar conversation. Reading a complicated article required skills beyond recognizing a few useful words. Developing ease across speaking, listening, and reading generally took sustained practice, not simply a few lessons. Historical accounts can describe these broad conditions, but they cannot establish the exact thoughts, conversations, or progress of an invented individual.

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