Family-related and other reasons

This population sample had many new Canadians. Family-related reasons for withdrawing included: the arrival of close relatives from the home country for a visit or extended stay; the departure for a visit to the home country to get over a depression; and, deaths of family members in another province. Other reasons included: daycare problem; trying to get landed immigrant status; health problems such as surgery, cancer and depression because of a job lay-off; and, lack of time because life was just too hectic before Christmas.

Multiple reasons

This category includes those responses which overlapped two or more of the categories. Two respondents were young mothers who were trying to juggle school work, part-time shift work and family responsibilities. In addition, one had had open-heart surgery followed by the ‘flu. The other woman said that she had run out of ideas for writing and wanted to work with books. She had enrolled in a night course at a local high school. One respondent gave mixed answers. He said he had dropped out because he was too busy, but when questioned about the program he said it was relaxing and he became lazy. He wanted specific exercises or specific topics to research, for example biographies of famous Canadians. He said he intended to go back some time. At the time of the interview he was enrolled in a night school bookkeeping course for small business. He had attained a Grade 10 level at school, but was “pushed on” and said he had difficulties in spelling, pronunciation and writing large words. He said he was at a Grade 5 or 6 English level. Another man gave mixed answers which were job and family-related.

Program dissatisfaction

Of the four respondents who were dissatisfied with the program, one said she wanted to work on her spoken English and grammar. Her conversational needs were not being met by the emphasis on writing. She had another course in mind. Another woman also wanted grammar and a more structured course. She had found a course more suited to her needs. Both of these women were in the ESL category.

The two men who were dissatisfied gave different answers. One felt the course was “too easy”, not challenging enough, nor interesting. He wanted more individual attention and less writing. He said he spent a long time sitting waiting for help before anyone came to him. He also wanted reading to be integrated with the writing. He suggested reading sections of a book and then writing a paragraph about it, was more what he wanted. This man was a day class attender on income assistance and had been in a special school up to Grade 4 but had a Grade 10 diploma. He had originally enrolled to improve his reading and spelling. The other respondent said that he did not do his writing homework before he went to class, and thus felt he was wasting his time in class. He had enrolled at B.C.I.T. in a quasi-trades course which did not require a Grade 12 certificate.