Immigrants

Dan Nguyen ENSL 0091 T. Price Correction #3 It is often that immigrants have lived in the United States for a long time, and children culturally become American. It is easy to understand that the children have become American because all of the culture around them. Most of the parents want their children to retain their cultural heritage. There are some ways to do that such as forcing children to speak native language at home, teaching them about traditional culture, and also eating native foods. First of all, I know most of the children were born here; they spoke their native language at home when they were small. After went to school, they started to speak English and little by little, they forgot their native language. That is not a good thing. Language is the most basic thing about culture. So in order to make sure the children retain their culture, we have to force them to speak native language at home and absolute no English. Every country has different culture, for my country, Vietnam; we are really polite when speaking to older people. English is different. All of my cousins are forced by their parent to speak Vietnamese at home. They do not like it when their children speak English. Beside language, traditional culture is also really important for children to retain their cultural heritage. They are growing up here so all they know is about the United States but have no idea about their native country. So we as their parent have responsibilities to teach them about history, traditional culture of our home country. Traditional culture such as all of the traditional holidays, traditional new year, traditional rituals… I think some of them are really interested to know about, especially if they are from your home country. Most of my cousins are Vietnamese- American; they told me they really like a Vietnamese New Year ceremony. My family used to do some small celebrations during Vietnamese’s New Year. That is a nice thing to do to teach them more about Vietnam’s culture. Lastly, foods are another way to teach them about culture. Fords are things that we eat everyday so if children speak their native language and also eat traditional foods, they are doing a basic thing of their home country. Also mot parents used to cook traditional foods at home. If their children are not going to eat that, what are they going to eat' Are they going to order some fast foods' That is really a bad thing. So we need to teach them to eat traditional foods since they are small. So we must force children to speak native language at home, teach them about traditional culture, and also to eat traditional foods. These are things we need to do to make sure the children retain their culture.