As we have been discussing in class, people who do not speak the standard language of their society have a very difficult time being successful in an academic setting. We threw around several possible reasons for this problem in class, some of which dealt with a basic lack of being able to interpret what is being taught. This is a very significant problem. With this inability to learn, it is extremely difficult for immigrants to become educated. Without education one’s options in life are severely diminished. For this reason a study was done in an attempt to better understand why people have difficulty learning in a second language. Nursing students in Australia were evaluated based on an English Language Acculturation Scale (ELAS). Acculturation was an idea I was unaware of prior to reading this article. It is defined as, “those phenomena which result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous first-hand contact, with subsequent changes in the original cultural patterns of either or both groups.” The evaluations of nursing students who spoke English as a second language were compared to their grades in nursing classes. A positive correlation was observed. This basically meant that the more acculturated the students were, the better they did in an academic setting. A positive correlation was also observed between acculturation and length of residence in Australia. The Authors believed that poor academic performance was due to low-English acculturation. Their suggestion for improving academic performance was to immerse the students in English, forcing them to be acculturated quicker. Does this seem like a good solution? Recall our reading for last class which discussed bridge readers. The non-English speaking students who were immersed in English and left to fend for themselves did not learn as quickly as those students who used bridge readers to slowly transition from their first language to English. So what are we to do? Is acculturation the best means of helping non-standard speakers to learn or should the problem be approached from another direction.