Good Neighbors: Combining verbs, nouns, wood shop

This vocational carpentry course is for Latinos and is teaching them English along with cabinet making. This sounds like a more interesting way to learn a language than sitting in a classroom, studying from a book. - - Donna Poisl

Students build English skills along with woodworks

By Dave Newhouse, Oakland Tribune columnist

Carpentry is about cutting corners, not conjugating verbs. But at Laney College, there's a unique program that combines building wooden cabinets with building basic English skills.

It's a vocational trade course of sorts worth college units — seven units per semester. Classes are held from 6 to 10 p.m., Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and students are so eager to learn that they're reluctant to leave.

"These guys have to be told to go home at night," said Ron Mackrodt, department chairman in Wood Technology at Laney College, "and most of them work in the daytime."

The students, mostly men, are Latinos from other countries and they are seeking a career and a better grasp of the English language. Only the English they're learning isn't for the purpose of writing term papers; it's to help them function as carpenters.

They're taught the English words for tools, carpentry terms, and also measurements in inches, feet and yards, because their native countries are on the metric system.
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