LingoBridge: breaking barriers through linguistic education
LingoBridge is a student run ESL Tutoring organization based in New England, which aims to make english more accessible.
LingoBridge Founder Cassidy Cui reflected on her experience growing up with parents who had vastly different immigration experiences. By watching them, she realized and learned just how much age can influence the language acquisition process in the U.S.
Cassidy Cui on what inspired her to start LingoBridge:
My mother immigrated from Vietnam at the age of 23, while my father immigrated from China when he was 12. As a child growing up in New York City, my father was able to grasp English fairly quickly whether that be in school or to translate for his parents. On the contrary, my mother found it difficult to find accessible ESL resources and lessons as an adult.
My mother has always voiced her struggles learning English later in life, and it was something that affected her deeply. With these observations about my parent’s ESL experiences, I was inspired to create an initiative that addressed these issues while also combining my own passions for language learning.
I wanted to create something accessible and personal to the AAPI community, thus, the idea of LingoBridge was born in 2022. With insights from AAPI community members, my mother, and my other relatives, I was able to listen to real perspectives and stories and craft a project that addressed community concerns.
In addition to my mother and relatives, my Mandarin teacher Ms. Lai, has been a really big supporter of mine and helped with the developmental stage of LingoBridge; she inspired me to cultivate a culturally responsive and individualized ESL learning environment.
With my iterations of LingoBridge, I was able to present this idea in my online business class called Entrepreneurship in a Global Context, where I was able to gain valuable and insightful feedback from students across the globe and get my proposal displayed on an online exhibit. From this experience and the feedback I was given by students, I was able to streamline the ‘student volunteer’ portion of LingoBridge to ensure it is flexible and accessible to all prospective high school volunteers.
On their mission:
LingoBridge, a student-led initiative located in New England, U.S.A., is dedicated to empowering Asian adult immigrants with limited English proficiency. Our mission is to enhance their language skills through comprehensive, accessible, and free online ESL lessons, aiming to dismantle barriers and create opportunities within the Asian community.
We are a complete not-for-profit, volunteer-based organization that is 100% student-run.
Recognizing the critical role of cultural nuances and the understanding of cultural contexts in language learning, we specifically cater to individuals of Asian descent. As of now, most of our audience has been from the Chinatowns in New York City and New Jersey. To facilitate effective communication and comprehension, our tutors are either bilingual or highly proficient in Mandarin.
So far LingoBridge has reached and is working with student volunteers nationwide with a team comprised of 30+ high school students from states ranging from New York, Texas, Arizona, etc.
Their current ESL learners' demographic primarily consists of adult immigrants who speak Chinese and reside in the Northeast tri-state area (NYC, NJ, CT). To continually improve their curriculum, following each lesson, they allow learners to provide feedback on the lesson and their experiences. Thus far, all feedback has been positive, with most liking how the curriculum is personalized and culturally responsive for Chinese learners.
LingoBridge strives to create an inviting platform to work with other youth projects. So far, they have established a partnership with the Metis Project in NYC and have been featured in the Gen Z Matters Podcast which is hosted by Annika Raj.
In the future LingoBridge strives to broaden its influence and aims to make its current curriculum personalized toward a wider range of AAPI communities and languages as several of its student volunteers are proficient in languages other than Chinese, including Korean and Hindi.
Further, they hope to reach more high school students across the country who are interested in volunteering with their organization through their media presence. As a youth-driven organization, they would love to collaborate with more student-run initiatives.
LingoBridge will start its fall season and Unit 2 lessons at the end of this October!
Signing up for lessons or volunteer with LingoBridge at: https://www.lingo-bridge.org/home
Stay updated with LingoBridge by following their Instagram, Tiktok, and LinkedIn pages:@lingosbridge
Comments