In this assignment, you will write a 5-paragraph essay about immigration and cultural adaptation. You will be assigned a particular cultural group. You are to imagine a person from this culture immigrating to your home country or province. Based on this premise, your essay will explain the kinds of adaptations necessary for a person from this group to live successfully in their new country. For further information and details about the structure and content of your essay, refer to the specifications and rubric for this assignment.

Meanwhile, you may follow the link below for general advice on how to write a 5-paragraph essay:

https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-nonfiction/how-to-write-a-five-paragraph-essay-that-works

Below is a model essay that addresses the challenges of immigrating to Canada from Jordan. Review the essay and then complete the awareness questions that follow.

The Challenges of Immigrating to Canada from Jordan

In recent years, immigration has become an increasingly common practice worldwide. The factors driving people to leave their home countries in order to start anew somewhere else are many and varied, including “push” factors, such as conflicts and famines, and “pull” factors, such as better opportunities for work. Sometimes, people immigrating to a new country have a lot of knowledge about the society they will be joining, gained either through research or the personal experience of friends and family, or maybe a combination of the two. Other times, however, immigrants arrive with little or no knowledge of the country, such as is often the case with refugees. For all new arrivals to a country, there is no doubt that adapting to their new home will require many adjustments, and Canada is no different than any other country in this respect. Canada is known for being a free and democratic society, founded on principles of justice and equality, where opportunities abound, based on individuals’ motivation and willingness to learn and work. Jordan, on the other hand, is a more traditional country led by a king. Many Jordanians, especially those who live outside the major cities, are quite conservative and the laws and dictates of Islam, the dominant religion, play a major role in people’s everyday lives. These contrasts would create many challenges for an individual wishing to immigrate to Canada from Jordan, particularly in terms of language, food and cultural norms related to gender.

The first challenge awaiting a new immigrant to Canada from Jordan is the language, in that English is the main language of communication in most of Canada, whereas the vast majority of Jordanians speak Arabic as their first language. While it is true that students study English as part of their curriculum in Jordan, it is also true that many do not come away from this study with a high, or even an intermediate, proficiency in the language, similar to the situation with those who study French as a second language in Canada. Without a good proficiency in English, opportunities will be limited for new immigrants and they may find themselves relegated to service type jobs, such as taxi drivers, rather than able to work in the fields for which they have studied in their home country. Further, there are several factors that may make English challenging to learn for Arabic speakers. The most salient of these is that English uses the Roman alphabet, and is written and read from left to right, while the Arabic alphabet is written from right to left. Both alphabets have a similar number of consonant phonemes, but English has twice the number of vowels that Arabic does, which can make listening discrimination challenging for learners. In addition, immigrants settling in cities such as Toronto and Mississauga, with large Arab populations, will find a community who speak their native language. However, this can be both a blessing and a curse, in that the more people are able to conduct their daily lives in Arabic, the less motivated they become to learn and practice English, which will ultimately limit their opportunities in a country such as Canada, where the majority of people are monolingual English speakers. Nevertheless, these challenges can be addressed if immigrants are determined to improve and language classes are readily available for newcomers at no cost. With diligent study and practice, people can reach a reasonable level of English proficiency in a relatively short time.

The second challenge for a Jordanian immigrating to Canada is related to food. As previously mentioned, most Jordanians are practicing Muslims. This has several ramifications for the food they choose to eat. First, Muslims do not eat pork or consume alcohol in any form. In Jordan, it is very easy to avoid these things, because the wider society is all doing the same. Further, any pork product is identified as “lehim khanzir”, literally “pig meat”. Not so in Canada! In English, there are many words representing various types of meat, all of which contain pork, such as bacon, ham, sausage, pepperoni, prosciutto, pancetta, etc. This often makes it very challenging for those wishing to avoid pork to do so, if they don’t happen to be familiar with all of these words. Similarly, alcohol is often used in cooking, especially in a wine-producing region such as Niagara. Wine and spirits are often found in sauces and desserts, and often identified not by their simple names, but by their varietals, such as Chardonnay and Cabernet. All of this can make reading a restaurant menu feel like a minefield for those with special dietary needs. In addition, observant Muslims prefer to eat meat and other food that is “halal”, which translates to “permissible” in English. This relates mostly to how an animal is slaughtered, in that it should first be blessed and then killed in a specific way. Although halal meat and other products are readily available in larger cities, for those living in smaller places, this can produce yet another challenge for them to deal with, because such products may not be available at all, or may be too expensive to fit in with a new immigrant’s budget. One way to address this challenge is to purchase a freezer and stock up on halal meat when and where it is available. Further, translation apps such as Google Translate can help newcomers avoid accidentally consuming pork or alcohol by shedding light on the various English terms for these foods.

The last area where considerable adjustment will be required for Jordanians to successfully adapt to life in Canada is in relation to cultural norms, particularly those related to gender differences and expectations. Although these days many women are highly educated and have successful careers in Jordan, especially in the larger cities, in villages it is still the norm for women not to work and instead be homemakers. This is increasingly rare in Canada, where the majority of women work outside the home due to the necessity of having two incomes in order for the family to survive. Such full time employment for women also brings about necessary adjustments inside the home, as men take on more duties that were traditionally thought of as “women’s work”, such as cooking, cleaning and childcare. For a family to successfully immigrate to Canada from Jordan, both partners would need to rethink their attitudes towards who earns the money, who pays the bills and who does what in the home. Further, most socializing in Jordan is done on a gender-separated basis. In general, men socialize with men and ladies with ladies; even wedding parties are often divided, with the two genders celebrating in separate banquet rooms. In more conservative families, this separation even extends to socializing in the home, where men gather in one living room and women in another. This is in sharp contrast to Canada, where most socializing occurs in couples and mixed groups. Jordanian women may at first feel uncomfortable and hesitant to speak in such a situation, while Jordanian men may need to revise their thinking to ensure they do not misconstrue normal behaviour for women in Canada as overly forward, or worse, as a signal of romantic interest. In order to slowly adjust, it will be helpful for newcomers to get to know some Canadian families and slowly build a trusting friendship that will allow them to ask any questions they may have and gradually get used to the behavioural norms in their new society.

In conclusion, immigration to Canada from Jordan will be an exciting, but also a challenging experience, particularly in terms of language, food and gender-based cultural norms. Nevertheless, if immigrants are motivated and open-minded, these challenges can be addressed by studying and practicing English, learning ways to accommodate their dietary needs and developing friendships and relationships that will help them to learn more about behavioural norms in Canada. In time, they will adjust, adapt and thrive in their new context, developing a whole new identity as Jordanian-Canadians, and join the legions of immigrants from around the world who have done the same and eventually become part of the diverse fabric woven into the quilt called Canada.

Awareness Questions