ABITURPRÜFUNG 1999 Arbeitszeit: 180 Minuten
ENGLISCH
als Grundkursfach
Textaufgabe I
LOST IN AMERICA
Elsa Flores fled El Salvadorīs civil war in 1980, moved to Los
Angeles and cleaned offices until she had saved enough money to open
a small clothing store. But her American dream fell apart in 1992
when racial tensions, videotape and a controversial court verdict
5 erupted into the Rodney King riots1. Flores huddled with her four
children in a back bedroom. They could hear gunfire and shouting
outside. Watching the news on TV, they saw flames dance from the
window of her clothing store. Flores assumed the rioters who des-
troyed her business were black. But then she caught a glimpse of
10 them on camera. They were like her: Latinos. Now she says: "They are
not bad people, but they become frustrated here."
The ambiguous role that Latinos played in those events under-
scores a much-ignored phenomenon: the vast new wave of low-skilled
immigrants has yet to find its place in the United States. Like
15 Flores, who scrimped and borrowed and rebuilt, most Latino immi-
grants bring enough ambition with them to compensate for a lack of
education. About two thirds achieve at least a working-class income.
But many others, though equally determined, fail. And more signifi-
cantly, their children often fail. Latinos are in danger of becoming
20 locked into the same distinctly American form of poverty that has
been perpetuated through generations of inner-city blacks. In fact,
if current trends persist, in another decade, Latinos will replace
blacks as the United Statesī biggest underclass. More than 30 per-
cent of Latinos who arrived in the 1980s live below the poverty
25 line.
For many immigrants, the journey north is an attempt to overcome
centuries-old barriers of race and class. What they find is new
barriers of class and race. The immigrants who have the strongest
memories of home do best in the States; however bad, it is still an
30 improvement. But for their children, who often have no memory of
home, America seems like a raw deal. They watch their parents and
see only toil and poverty. They watch American TV and see only
affluence. Public-school systems on the brink of collapse fail to
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give them the tools they need. "I can tell by looking in their eyes
35 how long theyīve been here, " says the Rev. Vergil Elizondo, of San
Antonio ,Texas. "They come sparkling with hope, and the first gener-
ation finds that hope rewarded. Their childrenīs eyes no longer
sparkle. They have learned only to want jobs and money they canīt
have."
40 Take the case of Mexican newcomers. Last year the National
Research Council, Americaīs most distinguished society of scholars,
found that Mexican immigrants start out with the lowest wages of any
nationality - and that the wage gap grows the longer they live in
the United States.
45 The statistics for their children are even more troubling.
Nationally, teenage births are declining. But not so for girls of
Mexican descent, for whom the rate has risen by a third during the
1990s. Last year nearly 11 percent of Latino teenage girls gave
birth - double the rate for whites, and for the first time surpasse-
50 ing the rate for blacks. School-dropout rates are also gloomy. The
U.S. Department of Education estimates that 44 percent of foreign-
born Latino youths between the ages of 16 and 24 are dropouts. That
number for American-born children of immigrants is 17 percent; for
blacks it is 13 percent, for whites, 17 percent. Because second-
55 generation Latinos are the fastest-growing source of new American
workers,their lack of basic skills could put a brake on the national
economy.
In the search for solutions to Americaīs growing Latino under-
class, the simplest proposal has been to reduce the flow of low-
60 skilled immigrants. That may be politically expedient, but it wonīt
work. The truth is that the United States needs these people. In a
decade, when the bulk of the baby-boom generation2 hits retirement
age, there will be a tremendous shortage of young workers. More than
a third of the Latino population is under the age of 18. The vast
65 majority are native-born U.S. citizens, and they are not going any-
where. They are the nationīs future. Unless new avenues of opportu-
nity open up for Latino immigrants and their children, the nation as
a whole will suffer. Remedies are still possible. A generation of
young people is still in school waiting to be taught, and
70 expectations are still alive. But the opportunities are rapidly
disappearing.
From: Newsweek, 15 Jule 1998
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Annotations:
1 Rodney King riots: reference to the riots that broke out in ethic
neighbourhoods, especially black areas, of Los Angeles in 1992,
when a court acquitted several white policemen accused of beating
up a black driver, Rodney King; the incident had been filmed on
videotape.
2 baby-boom generation: the generation born between the late 1940s
an the early 1960s, when the birth rate after the war was high
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ENGLISCH als GRUNDKURSFACH - Textaufgabe I
WORKSHEET: Lost in America
maximum number of
points attainable
I. Questions on the text
Read all the questions first, then answer them
in the given order.
Use your own words as far as is appropriate.
1. Describe Elsa Floresī "American dream" (1. 3). What happened
to it and what were her reactions to this experience? 20
2. How successfull are Latinos in the USA
(Refer to lines 12-25.) 10
3. Explain the difference in attitude towards life in America
between the first and the second generation of Latino
immigrants. 20
4. What do statistics reveal about the problems of Latino
youths in comparison with their black and white peers? 10
5. What ist the writerīs position in the political debate
about a growing Latino underclass? 10
6. Show three different ways in which the writer tries to
arouse the readerīs interest in his topic. 10
II. Composition 40
Choose o n e of the following topics.
Write about 120 to 150 words.
1. Everybody should be allowed to settle freely in the
country of their choice.
Discuss.
2. "Variety is the spice of life." Discuss this proverb
in terms of cultural diversity.
III. Translation 40
Translate the following text into German:
_____
160
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Europe is no longer the United Statesī chief supplier of
immigrants. The lead passed to Asia and Latin America in the 1960s,
and by the next decade their arrivals were outnumbering those from
the Old World by four to one. Nationwide they still comprise a
small minority, yet they also have changed the ethic mix of a
half-dozen and more major metropolitan centers. Although an ex-
treme case, Greater Los Angeles exemplifies the forces at work.
Ist Hispanic presence has increased threefold and ist Asian ten-
fold over the last twenty-five years.
More immigrants, and more different kinds of immigrants, have
entered the United States than any other country in modern history.
The conditions that led them to leave their homelands varied:
overpopulation, contracting economic opportunities, famine, war,
religious persecution, political oppression. Whatever the push
that set them in motion, the pull that lured them to America was
the promise of a fresh start. Much the same reasons explain why
newcomers are still coming, close to four million in the last
decade, not counting an unknown but doubtlessly large number of
illegal entrants1
From: Arthur Mann, "From Immigration to Acculturation", in
Luther S. Luedtke (ed), Making America, 1992
1 entrants: here: people entering a country
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