Group Work In Canada

Introduction

Group Work & Immigrants It could be argued that group work can have a direct positive impact on helping immigrants acclimate to life in Canada. Group work has been used a type of therapy in recent years to help all kinds of individuals in vulnerable situations come together and work together on their journey to improve their lives. When newcomers arrive to Canada they are faced with a multitude of challenging issues that they have to deal with in order to find a better life for themselves and for their families. In addition to not being able to speak the English language that well (often times), immigrants also need to work hard to find a job quickly in order to support their families and all in all immigrants sometimes struggle

Learning English as a second language can be a struggle for many immigrants across the world, especially when they simultaneously have to find a job, support their families and sometimes even attend school. ESL classes are provided for immigrants in order to improve their English and help them find a good job and acclimate into Canadian society. Both children and adult newcomers struggle when it comes to learning English and taking ESL classes on top of an already stressful life, but learning English has shown to be a much easier process when working in groups. Aside from learning grammar and spelling it is essential to know how to properly converse with other people in English and communicate in an understandable and relatively fluent manner and who better to practice one’s conversation skills then with other immigrants in the same position. Group work has proven to be effective in many situations which is why it should be more often applied to language learning and as Weimer (1987) suggested, “No matter how much we hate or love group work; it is one of the effective strategies of learning a lesson that creates a powerful learning experience among students and that activity as group work has the potential to develop students’ progression in new information, which accelerates learning” (p. 2). Learning English in a group work setting puts newcomer students into situations where they are conversing with someone on the same ESL level as them (more or

Adjusting to Canada’s different norms and culture is another problem immigrants come face to face with since often times they are very different to their own and struggle with understanding and adopting them into their everyday lives. This cultural issue can range from adjusting to new traditions, celebrations, food, clothing style and much more. With this culture shock many immigrants experience stress and isolation from feeling as if they do not belong or fit into their new surroundings and are not able to understand or dive into a new environment. Group work is effective in easing in newcomers into a new society by helping them understand the norms and varying culture whilst still maintaining their own. It’s important to feel comfortable in a new country and be able to fuse your existing culture with a new one, and group work has always been around to help with the process as explained by Grief & Ephross (2004), “Group work practice with immigrants started in the settlement houses, which were located in poor urban neighborhoods where most of the new immigrants initially settled (...) These early groups helped the immigrant boys acculturate into the American mainstream, and the settlement houses also served as a social center for their parents” (p. 181). This study referred to the diverse community that immigrated to Chicago from various European countries in the 1980s and how these newcomers found comfort in a new and strange land by attending group work