"I need to learn more English" There was a strong sense of obligation among the learners regarding the need to learning English. As adults, they chose to attend English language classes which displays, to some degree, their understanding of a need for the formal study of English. This need comes across in the ubiquitous self and other assessments of language ability that occur in the classroom and in the in-home interviews. Comments of the type "I can't speak English" are, paradoxically, uttered in English and this hyperbole reflects both the learners' own insecurities and the comparison of their own proficiency with some ideal proficiency level that we all believe exists in language.

Student comments in their in-home interviews often reflected dissatisfaction with their level of proficiency in English. Our sense was that learners may have been speaking to the researchers (one of whom was their English teacher) through their interviews and expressing embarrassment that they did not achieve a higher level of proficiency. Though the learners were self-deprecating, observation of their classroom interaction and an understanding of their lives outside the classroom suggest that they all can claim degree of success on some level in terms of job status, acculturation, family ties, or language learning.

Starting over
While it is likely that all learners in the Portraits would have agreed, half of them mentioned explicitly the feeling that the process of immigration and language learning was in some way 'starting over'.

In interaction in the classroom, Quyen tried to motivate and reassure her peer English language learners telling them that they should be comfortable considering themselves beginner language learners "starting over again" in the U.S. In an in-home interview, her compatriot, Minh, also suggests that immigration is like "starting over" and that Vietnamese people are not accustomed to such new beginnings.

Valerio describes a new beginning in terms of career - that he had a good job with a good salary in Mexico but because of the lack of English language skills, in the U.S., he had to start over with respect to job and career.

Jorge described 'starting over' in two different ways, first as the potential result of the hardships particular to immigrants. After arriving in Portland, Jorge became very aware and interested in the local homeless population and suggested that because of the weak social support systems in the U.S., immigrants could easily decline financially and socially to the point where they may "have to start over from nothing again" - like the homeless people he interacted with. He also discusses the situation of immigration itself as starting

over with nothing in a new place and that new start from zero causes immigrants to live cautiously, to fear any further change once they establish some kind of routine.

Most interestingly, Larissa and Fuquin, both with younger children, describe their English language learning and acculturation as a process of simultaneous socialization into English with their children. Larissa described 'starting over' in the context of an English language literacy event -- reading books in English with her first grader. Larissa characterizes herself as starting over in 1st grade as an English language reader. Fuquin made a parallel between the forthcoming birth of her second child as her own opportunity for starting again with her socialization into the English language culture of the U.S. This was an opportunity she felt she missed with her first daughter who was seven years old when the arrived in the U.S. and who quickly became more proficient in English than her mother. Fuquin saw her expected child's birth as a chance for her own re-birth as a member of U.S. culture and the English language. For both Larissa and Fuquin, this aspect of 'starting over' entailed a radical (re)creation of their identity as parents in response to the needs of language learning (Weinstein-Shr, 1995).