[music playing]

Automated: OTAN-- Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

Jennifer Gagliardi: So Hi. Again, I'm Jennifer live from San Jose. And welcome to TDLS, my very favorite workshop or conference. And today, we're going to talk about using technology in the citizenship preparation course.

Instead of giving you a full like 72-slide presentation of all the different resources, I basically focus this more on using technology within the classroom. And our circumstances have changed. In Milpitas, I used to teach a live citizenship class. But because of staffing changes, I don't know about your part of town, but it's very difficult for us to get teachers. So now I'm teaching citizenship remotely and teaching literacy in the morning and in the evening. So that's really changed us.

So I had to incorporate some of our best practices from the classroom, don't necessarily work in distance learning. So we're going to talk a little bit about that. And also, I want to hear from everybody else about how their citizenship program has changed themselves.

I would like to just take a nanosecond to have everybody introduce themselves. Gretchen, I'm very pleased that you've joined us. My students and I have really benefited from your scholarship. So thank you so much, Gretchen. So anybody else would like to take an opportunity to say hello? OK, let's get started.

So today, we're going to identify the latest citizenship resources in the form of mobile apps, videos, websites, online courses, textbooks, and more. By adapting and incorporating these digital resources, participants will be able to implement learning strategies appropriate for citizenship online courses, blended learning, distance learning environments, or directed self-study.

So the first thing I would like to see-- are you able to see the title of the slide, or is there a black bar there? You are.

Speaker 2: We see the USCIS.gov virtual tour.

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK, good. One of the very first things that people need to do when they start a citizenship class is to introduce students and staff to the self-service tools and resources on USCIS.gov. Otherwise, they might be tempted to go off into commercial websites and get their information from the commercial websites as opposed to getting it from the direct source, USCIS.gov.

There's three key components that you want to take a look at. You want to take a look at the forms. You want to take a look at the tools. And you want to access that Citizenship Resource Center. So let's talk about the forms. Now the N-400, you can follow it online. And we've been able to do this for a couple of years.

But they finally put out a new video specifically about how to create a USCIS account, and to be able to use the N-400 to apply online, which is really important because I know people still submit paper N-400 online. This was really critical, especially in March 2020 where a lot of people were sending in their N-400s too because there was going to be a fee increase.

However, a lot of those paper, those paper applications have been taken and stored in a very, very secure place in the depths of Kansas. And who knows when they will come out? So some people have been waiting for two years. And meanwhile, people who have recently applied are already basically being interviewed.

So again, if you do apply online, they're going to be able to track your application that much easier. And you're going to be able to monitor your case progress that much easier. So please take a look at the forms and consider filing the N-400 online.

Also, people who go to lawyers or legal services they're not going to fill out those paper applications. They also will be using the N-400 tool-- excuse me, the USCIS online account to submit your application online. So there is a real strong, strong reason to do this.

Finally, this also supports workplace skills and the fact that you're using technology to basically trying to get this application in. So you need to basically use your email. You have to remember your password. You have to use a two-step verification process. So again, this is really important for you and for your workplace skills.

The second thing that I want to talk about is the Tools page. And then on the Tools page, there are seven very important tools that basically can help a student monitor their own case. Now I've only identified seven and I put them in alphabetical order. Number one is Ask Emma. And this is their digital assistant. So if you go to the website, on the upper right hand corner, usually a digital assistant will pop up and ask you, can I help you? Can I direct you to the correct page? It's available in an English and also in Spanish.

So it's a very helpful tool. The more people use it, the better it can basically service people and their questions. And Emma, why is it named after Emma? It's named after Emma Lazarus who wrote the poem "The Liberty Enlightening the world." This poem that's on the base of the Statue of Liberty. So she's trying to enlighten people, trying to bring them into to the United States immigration process.

There's the Case Processing Times. And what do we mean by the Case Processing Times? You put in the form that you're going to be using, particularly if you're applying for citizenship, it will be the N-400. And you will be also listing the field office that is the closest one to you where you will be probably going for your interview so they can give you an approximate time.

So for us in San Jose, it's 12.5 months to 18 months. So of course, the USCIS is working as hard as they can to resolve those case backlogs. But again, this is going to give you an approximate time so you can start planning your classes, start planning for your application, start saving money for that application process.

The third one I would like to talk about is Case Status Online. So if you submit your case online, or if you submit it by paper and you get your receipt number, you can follow the progress of your case online. Is it at the lock box? Is it in a field office? Is there a background check happening? So again, take a look at that one.

There's a warning on this. There are many apps out there that claim that they will help you monitor your USCIS case online. Those people are taking your personal information and selling your information. You do not need to hand over your personal information to somebody who can profit from it. They get your information directly from USCIS.

e-Request, sometimes-- this is the next one, the fourth tool. e-Request is about cases that have exceeded the proper amount of processing time. So for instance, if I take a look at our field office, they're saying right now we're reviewing applications that were submitted before June 2021.

If it is outside of that range, if you still have a case, say, for instance, February 2021 that has exceeded the proper amount of time, you can submit a case and say, hey, what is happening? Might be an address. Might be a name correction error. But the thing is that you do have a way to flag your case and say, hey, this is taking a little bit longer.

The next one is Fee Calculator. So they're going to ask you what your form is. So in our case, it's N-400. They're going to ask you for your age because people who are older than, I believe, 75 do not have to submit a biometrics fee, which is $85. So they're going to tell you the correct fee to send in. Because if you spend send in too much to be safe, they're not going to give you your money back, OK? So make sure you send in the proper amount. And you can use a credit card to pay this. You can use a check. You cannot send in cash.

The next one is the N-400 Early Filing Calculator. So most people submit the N-400 application based on five years of permanent residency. Four years, nine months, and one day, you can submit your N-400 application for naturalization. Or if you're married to a US citizen, it's two years and 9 months and one day. So they're going to ask you those dates.

However, one of the things that happened recently to one of my students, yes, she was married to American citizen. She had a green card for three years. She lived in the United States for three years. Her husband was a citizen for three years. But they denied her application because she was here on a conditional residency.

She does not have permanent residency yet. They had not cleared her petition for permanent residency based on her marriage. So she has to come back in five years. Very, very disappointing for the student. And she does not get the refund back for $725.

OK. And the next one is Naturalization Eligibility Tool. And you're going to see this eligibility tool also when you apply online. They're going to ask you questions like, how long have you had your green card, were your parents citizens, et cetera, et cetera. They want to make sure that you're meeting all the requirements to become a US citizen. Very important.

The third page or the third tab that you really want to take a look at is the Citizenship Resource Center. And in the Citizenship Resource Center, there's two or three elements I really want you to take a look at. So find study materials and resources. So those are usually focused in on the civics spelling-- excuse me, civics vocabulary reading and writing materials. Also, they have multilingual materials there too. So if you're standing up for the civics, the 100 questions, that's where you're going to go to.

On the other hand, resources for educational programs, that's where you're going to find the USCIS lesson plans. And I'll show you two examples of that in just a minute. So here programs that are just starting out, they want to see if they can actually go and launch a citizenship program.

They can go here to print out lesson plans, handouts for their students, and also further teaching material to plan the curriculum and also for a teacher education. So take a look at these resource educational programs. Very, very rich material. I want to show you two examples of this material.

No. Excuse me. Here we have a lesson plan. So this is an example of the handouts for the lesson plans for the Declaration of Independence. This is the beginning level. So on one side, immediately you see, hey, we have the same picture, but there's a lot more space on here. The vocabulary is simpler. The sentences are simpler. And they're focusing on the concept of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the dates, July 4th, 1776. And again, on Independence Day.

So that's the beginning level compared to the intermediate level where you have the text, and then you have the civics questions. So most beginning level PDFs do not have the civics questions in there. They're trying to basically get used to the students to be able to learn the vocabulary. And when you get to the intermediate level, that's when they actually start asking the questions related to the civics questions.

In some situations, particularly when I teach on libraries and I have a class where I'm not sure what level of the students I'm going to have, on one side, I'm going to have the beginning level, and the other side, I'm going to have an intermediate level. So they can mix and match. So people can be basically on the same page, like a lot of Gretchen's books. Doesn't matter which book you have. You're all on the same page.

Now I want to go to the Oath of Allegiance. And on the Oath of Allegiance, they have new lesson plans are related to the N-400 application of the naturalization. So they have things related to family members, addresses, dates, et cetera, et cetera. This one is new from the Oath of Allegiance. And again, they have something that the vocabulary for the Oath of Allegiance is very, very difficult. This one you can see is a little bit more graphic-oriented. And they're talking about the whole concept of military service. And you're promising to bear arms.

So again, they're trying to get you to create almost like a matrix of ideas around the whole concept of military service and relating it back to the Oath of Allegiance. Of course, there is very subtle references in here if you look very deeply to some of the civics questions and also references to other parts of the N-400. So here's two examples of that. One minute please.

Anyway, so let me get to you on. This one I'm going to continue the virtual tour. This is preparing the oath for virtual tour. So this is from the American-- sorry, the natural-- no, the National American History Museum in Washington D.C. And they have created a project with USCIS where they use the resources from the American History Museum to create one video for every single one of the USCIS questions, which are really, really great and they're really, really beautiful. They're slow. They're very clean and really deliver some great content.

They also follow up immediately by a quiz related to the civics question, and they always have sorting and sequencing practices. And as this website has grown, they've added more and more of these activities. There's also transcripts of all the videos and word lists. You can use this material to modify and create these activities, such as cloze listening or paired dictation, or you can use it for students to study this deeper.

This is a really great replacement for the M-638, which was the quick civics lessons. And students still bring those to school. After they get their fingerprint appointment, they come back with this little red book and a CD in there where they're reading about it. But the material is so dense. This is an ESL version of the M-638 with much cleaner language and much really great graphics.

Also, this is a great way to supplement some of the material that we have in our own citizenship books. And also, you can use this as a replacement for maybe you don't have textbooks in your programs, or maybe you might have old textbooks. You can use this material from preparing the oath to supplement and deliver really quality content for your US citizen program.

Also, because the graphics are so rich and because the activities are so good, it really gets away from the whole thing about flash cards. So a lot of my students have already memorized the questions before they even come to class. They don't know what they say, but they know what the right answer is.

So what we're trying to do is basically try to get them and actually invest themselves and see themselves in the content that's being presented and the history that's being presented. So when I showed the videos in class, I stop the video and sometimes I ask the students, hey, we see a picture of the Pacific Ocean here. We see a picture of the Atlantic Ocean here. What do you see the differences are? And it's like, oh, the Pacific Ocean is much bluer. Atlantic Ocean is much colder. OK, it really looks cold. That attaches to Europe. This attaches to Asia.

So getting the people to see themselves and being able to describe and actually envision, creating that content is really going to help them basically use the content that they learn and the language skills that they learned during the citizenship process, and then have that basically permeate the rest of their lives.

I want to talk about how I'm delivering content in my class. So I used to have class. We would meet six hours a week. So three hours on Tuesday night, three-hour Tuesday and Thursday nights. We would have approximately 25 students mixed levels of my class. And you would have to be approximately ESL 3 to get into the class.

However, right now here I say, I want to learn about citizenship, but I can't come to class. A lot of people do want to come to class, but we are having staffing problems. And there are scheduling problems where our students themselves because a lot of people are still struggling to put together a series of jobs to support themselves, support their families. So we're still at a very unsure times and flexibility is key.

So I am delivering my class over the internet right now. How am I doing this? So I'm using my blog uscitizenpod.com, which it's been up since about 2007. So every week, I put together a series of 15 weeks of lessons, five lessons per week. And then they're based on US citizenship in uscitizenpod interviews. So I start off with very low-level interviews, and then I go up to things that are very close to the N-400 or questions that will be asked during the citizenship interview. So I really keep the N-400, the core of the lessons that I deliver.

There's always a video that basically is illustrating what's happening in the video. So either I have students-- we're doing the practice lesson, or something very close to what's happening in that citizenship interview. You have the script of the interview and we also have supplemental interviews. What do I mean by supplemental interviews? I took the USCIS N-400 and I broke it down into 30 separate pieces. So I always have a little snippet of one of those interviews that students can practice in a depth way.

I have context from civics. And what do I do? What am I doing with them? I'm linking to preparing the oath, which I just talked about, and I'm using USCIS PDFs. So the students themselves can basically click that link. They're merely taken to preparing the oath. They watch the videos. They come back. They can read the USCIS PDFs.

And I leave that link up for the preparing the oath and for the USCIS PDFs approximately a week. Some I make slight changes every day, but still they don't have to do everything in one day. They can basically be on that website for about 20 minutes to basically get enough information, come back the next day and get further information.

So I want small opportunities to practice every day, not a huge-- I don't want people to binge citizenship content. I want them to access it every day. And if you keep it fresh and you put in slight variations, there is a pattern that emerges and there's opportunities to continue the practice.

The next thing is that I always pair things up with the US Learns Citizenship lessons. So when I have to basically show that we're in a distance learning environment and I have to show the amount of time my students are engaging with content, I use the minutes that they are basically engaged through USA Learns. I can't show the minutes that they're on the block. There's no way to capture that information. I can calculate how long that it would take to go through that information.

But USA Learns is delivering content in a very systematic, very English-friendly way. And in fact, if you have one complaint about USA Learns, it's too complete. This is a very, very in-depth. So that information from USA Learns is linked with the information that I'm presenting this week.

Also, I always have a Learn more section where I link up to VOA News, VOA learning English. They have a great history section that I love to do. And I always have more quizzes that I've written or I have a collection of material. Say, for instance, this month is Women's History Month. So I have a lot of information about Women's History Month that students can go through. And again, it's constantly linking back to USCIS civics questions and the N-400 information.

And finally, the students that are enrolled in my class at Milpitas Adult School, I meet with them about half an hour every week on Zoom, or I do practice interviews based on what is presented that week. And the students-- so I'm not lecturing. I'm basically doing the interviewing based on the material that they learned that week. And they're really, really happy about that. So they feel like, I don't have to be sitting in this classroom. I can attend to my adult duties. I'm learning about citizenship, and I'm getting really great feedback from my teacher. And I want to talk a little bit more about that.

So I want to talk about mock interview videos. So I always record our Zoom sessions. Some people are also meeting on Google Meet. Some people use Flipgrid. I know some people use Jamboard, I'm not exactly sure how they're doing that, and in Canvas themselves. So they're recording sessions and they're basically maintaining it in there. And oh. I meant to say that I have set up a Canvas course. But right now we're still working on our blog, off our blog.

I'm using the progressive series of mock citizenship interviews, again, from the mix and match citizenship interviews, which are for different levels. It starts with level A, which is only 10 questions, level B is 15 questions, level C is 20, and then 25. I'm trying to get them to figure out what the scope of the N-400 citizenship interview is.

And then on the other side of the paper, there would have been a civics quiz. And the reason why I did that is because I would have students of all sorts of levels. And it was a way to level the practice field, whereas the lower level students would be doing the practicing with the lower material. But they would still be able to engage with the upper level student, and they're still getting a citizenship interview experience in approximately five to 10 minutes.

So there's enough give and take that's going on. Here you're not getting students interacting with each other. They're interacting with the teacher. But they're also interacting with their family because sometimes they actually do record themselves with their family and they share it with me.

I upload this to a Google Drive or to a YouTube channel. I set every-- oh, excuse me. I organize the videos into folders, or for me, I prefer YouTube. I do it in a playlist. So each student has a playlist so they can go back and review the material. But everything is set to private or unlisted to preserve their privacy. And when they leave the program, we go through it. We delete the ones that they want to be deleted. They may want to download one or two for themselves. And this is a way that they can basically see their progress.

Sometimes they share it with their relatives because they want to be practicing. And it's been a very, very helpful experience. In certain situations, we make a point to record things specifically for my other YouTube channel, which has approximately 600 videos, so people can see that. But it's very well-groomed that they do not put private information there. But again, it's very, very important to record these interviews because it basically shows progress and it gives them the feedback and a continuous, yes, I'm on the way. We're doing this. This is very important.

I want to talk a little bit more about some other video resources that are really important besides USCIS.gov. There we had the-- oh, excuse me one second. There's a couple of videos that you really need to check out now in USCIS.gov. They have these quick tips about filing. Basically, one minute talking about signing things, talk about sending it to the right-- a lockbox. These are very important to share with your students either through in your Canvas course or in your classroom. So showing your students and having them talk about it and describe it is very, very important.

ESSA Group was started by a volunteer in, I think, outside of Washington D.C. And she has put out some really fine practice interviews. And also Pittsburgh Literacy has done an outstanding job posting some of their classroom lectures about civics and also the N-400. So I'm really, really impressed by Pittsburgh Literacy. Great. I misspelled my own website, uscitizenpod. That's my YouTube channel. And believe me, I do know how to spell uscitizenpod. So I'm sorry about that.

VOA News, VOA Learning English and Listen and Read Along. What's the difference? VOA News is basically-- what is that called? It is a project coming out of the State Department to disseminate information all over the world about not only what's happening in the United States, but what's happening to the rest of the world.

So if you go to VOA News and you basically take a look at the language button on the very top, you can see a couple of things. Number one, you can see that it has VOA Learning English where people can start not only learning English, but the best way to learn your English is through stories, particularly news stories. So you could go to that, practice some of the lessons that they have on there. They have great US history information, great things about Congress, great things about the laws that affect everyday life. So taking a look at that there as well

VOA News, the parent company or the parent news site, also is really tracking what's happening in the United States. They have a special page for immigration. They have a great new podcast about the Ukrainian crisis. They had great coverage of the election. So taking a look at this. And they have things that are very easily accessible and digestible for ESL students.

Also, when I talked about the language button, they have new sources for many, many different languages in Africa and Asia, and in Europe and South America. So they can get news from their home countries. And these are filed not by state media, but by journalists who have associated with VOA News throughout the world and they're basically posting information about what's happening in their own countries.

So it's really interesting for my own students to see what kind of news they're getting out of the state media from their home country, versus what kind of information are they're getting from their own language media in this country and what VOA is actually saying. So it's very interesting. Getting news from a couple of different serious sources has been really interesting. So looking at VOA is really good.

A lot of times I start my class by doing their VOA Learning English. They have one minute videos of what happens in a single day. So they'll post for very, very short stories about things from different parts of the world. And my students are able to identify the country, basically describe what they see in the pictures. And it's a really good way to get them to start talking in the very beginning of the class.

Another resource that's a long time resource is Listen and Read Along. And they take content from VOA, and they basically put up the text only. But when the word is spoken, it's highlighted. So it's a transcript and you can basically read along. And it really has helped student fluency. And they have great stuff in there about citizenship prep material.

We have the YouTube websites from the White House, the State Department. Department of Interior has a great video that they post every week what it's like the week in review from the Department of interior. And the State Department does this too. And a new website-- or actually it's been along for a while, but this is ShareAmerica.gov. And they post very short videos in multiple languages talking about issues directly that happens in representing what's happening in America and the issues, particularly in our foreign relationships.

So for instance, they're posting videos now about people from the Ukraine talking about some of their experiences. So again, taking a look at not only the video channel, but also taking a look at the website because they're talking about immigrant experiences and also the experiences of America and what we want to share.

So it's just a really, really interesting. And it's the same global initiative that comes that is the parent to Voice of America and also American English at State. So this is a really good contents. They're all supporting each other. And again, really needs to be brought into our classrooms.

TED-Ed and Crash Course, a little bit too fast for my students. . But it's interesting when the parents share it with their kids because they're basically want to share their experiences. Like, they're studying American history or civics in citizenship m but the kids are taking an American history class. So sometimes there's back and forth here based on these videos.

And the last thing that I want to talk about video resources, which is not really on YouTube, is We Speak New York, which was a series of videos about the immigrant community in New York. The first series came out in 2008. Another series came out in 2018 or '19. And they're talking about different things, like going to the dentist, health concerns, depression, domestic violence, et cetera, et cetera. Lots of rich PDF content. Very, very entertaining. And my students, even from ESL 1 all the way up to my ESL 6 students really get a lot out of there.

Are there things directly about citizenship? No, but there are things, for instance, where people get in trouble with the law and it's very difficult to talk about these experiences in the classroom. I've shown these videos, and then people privately have discussions about them. Very, very helpful.

So here we have Joe Biden. He's pushing the civics playlist from USCIS. And what that is is you have a USCIS officer looking dead into the camera and asking those USCIS questions. So good job, Joe. Social media-- you know your students are on social media. Let's give them a citizenship test so they could basically practice some of their skills. So I've ask my students to basically follow USCIS either in English or in Spanish.

And I've also asked them to follow some of their elected officials. So that's how I found out that Ro Khanna, our representative in Silicon Valley, has published a new book about digital justice, or they're following a specific topic. So a lot of them follow news about what was happening in Hong Kong, which people are very concerned about.

So we're doing this to basically compare and contrast about social media. So for instance, our representative will look one way on Instagram versus a much more informal Instagram is much more formal on Twitter. So doing the compare and contrast and seeing, what does he say? Does it actually match up to the headlines that we see in our local papers?

There's two series that I really want to talk about. And I think it's really important to talk about one of the responsibilities about citizenship is being an informed citizen. So going and taking a look at the VOA Learning English news series, which is a series of six videos that talk about news literacy is very important. And also the iCivics News Literacy unit, and then NewsFeed Defenders game.

Citizenship students, a lot of them, most of our students are a little bit too low to play these games, but our upper level students can do it. And it's been very educational when they go and play these games or interact with this information. And they bring it back to the class and they say, hey, this is what I learned. Or sometimes they play the games with their kids. It's very, very helpful. There's also a really great game from iCivics, which is talking about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship too. So check it out.

One more thing about iCivics, they have really good lesson plans that can be adapted for adult education. And also their blog always features a special topic. For instance, I think this month is about Women's History. But they've had months about news literacy or voting rights. So again, take a look at iCivics.

Next thing. I want to talk about having a scavenger hunt. And I used to do this all the time in my classroom. Unfortunately, I'm not able to do this in my digital or my distance learning experience right now. However, maybe It'll come up a little bit later.

So for instance, I've had so many students like say, teacher, who's my US Senator, my representative? Or I need to submit my arrest record with the N-400. These are two very important things. One is related to the tests. The other one is related to the interview. And you got to deliver that content. So for instance, we basically identify the appropriate portals.

So USA.gov has links to all sorts of states and counties, and the US representatives and the senators. So I basically say, OK, you want to find your senator, start there. See if you can find senator, OK? Now it's easy enough for us. We say go to Senate.gov.

But if you tell somebody something, they're not going to remember it. If you actually show them the tech tools and enable the students to use the tech tools in a classroom, they're going to be able to do it and they're going to be able to remember it and pass it on to other students. Also, they're probably able to basically converse about this in their own languages. And again, to reinforce the information.

California.gov-- they do not have a specific app, but they have a really great portal that looks great on the mobile app. Again, this is going to link to our states and local agencies. We have the Causes app, which originally was called Comfortable. And it attracted national news and legislation, particularly if you're interested in immigration, seeing what's happening with that. And then also tracks with every time one of your legislature votes, or you can basically say, hey, Ro Khanna, I support X, Y, and Z. So this is a way to do that.

My City-- so it would be My City San Jose, or My City-- or excuse me, My San Jose, or My Milpitas, or San Jose 311, or Milpitas 311. These are local government or apps that talk about local government agencies so they can connect up. And that's how they would find out where people would go to get their police records.

Because sometimes people when they're traveling, particularly my students who are truck drivers, they don't get their tickets in their cities. They get them out in other cities, OK? Well, how do I find out where I get my arrest record for that? So that's been very, very useful to use these apps.

And also locally, Nextdoor are always monitoring when our political-- or sorry, local issues, or when our politicians come in and have town meetings. So the Nextdoor app has been very, very helpful to gain access to different agencies, to gain access to our political leaders. Very, very important stuff.

OK, so believe it or not, especially really noticed this during COVID, every form is an opportunity. And you're thinking, oh, my god, do I have to type my name again? But if you think about every form or your every encounter, you can basically think about this in terms like, OK, this is getting me one step closer to citizenship. It's an opportunity for me to practice the N-400 part of my citizenship interview.

So there's the wallet interview. What do I mean by the wallet? If you open your wallet, the first thing that you probably see is your driver's license. Well, what information is on there? Name, address, date of birth. OK, those are three things that are on the USCIS that you will be asked during your citizenship interview.

You will see your green card. You're going to see things in there that are related to your marriage. You're going to have pictures of your kid. You're going to have money in there. So if you have a dollar, who's the first president, who's the father of our country, et cetera, et cetera. So you can basically start using your wallet as ways to practice, using those documents to basically remind yourself of material that's on the N-400.

Medical forms are also really good. Because a lot of times, they're going to be asking about, do you need an accommodation because you have problems with hearing, or seeing, or maybe you have things related to mobility? And also they ask a lot about family relationships. Did your mother have any history of X, Y, and Z?

So again, this is a way that you can start connecting up to the accommodations and the family portion of the N-400. When I shop online, and I do a lot, basically there's so many things in there about addresses. So again, this is a way to practice the addresses that we need to know for the N-400 interview.

Job applications-- this is a way for us to talk about employment gaps in our employment and how we basically financially support ourselves. So this is very, very important. Think about job applications. Job application-- also when you go to a medical exam, these are kind of gatekeeping interviews where they're asking sensitive information. You have to negotiate, giving you the correct answers so your proper needs will be met.

And finally, I was thinking about this the other day, airline tickets. Hey, nobody's been traveling recently, OK? So the whole concept of people traveling outside the United States. That series of questions on the N-400 is very not so exciting right this very second. However, every time you do buy an airline ticket or do any traveling, it's a way for you to remember this information. So remember, they're able to ask you about the travel in the last five years. So Maryland--

Speaker 2: Jennifer?

Jennifer Gagliardi: Yes.

Speaker 2: Sorry, I just want to give you one head's up. We've got about five minutes left.

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK. And I'm here at the five minute mark, OK?

Speaker 2: Awesome.

Jennifer Gagliardi: So I am looking forward to hearing about people reflecting on or how people are re-envisioning their own citizenship program. So this is the final question for today. And also I have given the link for this presentation and also a resource list with all sorts of goodies on the resource lists, the PDF. So that could be dropped in the chat.

Speaker 2: It's there now.

Jennifer Gagliardi: So any question? Oh, and I have some news, personal news. I've been posting a lot of new material. But in August, I was contacted by the people who write For Dummies series, those big yellow books. So I just finished writing U.S. Citizenship For Dummies. It's up on-- yeah, so it's now available for pre-order on Amazon. So I'm very, very excited about that. Yay.

So that's the one textbook. It's not really a textbook. But it's going to be helpful for people who are looking for immigration and basically preparing for citizenship. Gretchen, have you written anything lately?

Gretchen Bitterlin: I have a couple of things that I've come across that might be useful to people.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Sure.

Gretchen Bitterlin: I've been tutoring some Syrian families on citizenship. And maybe everybody already knows about this site, but it's ameerusa.com. And it's a very clear review of the 100 questions that has the translations, and then a clear practice in English for them that helps them therefore understand more than just memorizing. But anyway, it's something to check out as a resource for Arab speakers.

Jennifer Gagliardi: That's really, really helpful because I think the best resource that I found for Arab speakers is cair.org. And they're sponsoring a series of these-- so it's--

Gretchen Bitterlin: CAIR?

Jennifer Gagliardi: Council American-- or Arab-- Oh, sorry. cair.org--

Gretchen Bitterlin: .Org.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Yeah.

Gretchen Bitterlin: OK. OK.

Jennifer Gagliardi: So that's a new resource for me. And a lot of those resources that I would normally be talking about is in the PDF that's just been dropped in to the chat. And also I just posted-- or a video to the new CASA citizenship channel. And that one has much more of those kind of resources on there. So I'm showing a lot of different things like that. Anything else besides that one that you want to share, Gretchen?

Gretchen Bitterlin: Oh, no. I think people may already know. But if your school is using Ventures, people may not know that-- of the Arcade, which is a free online practice site, they have a citizenship section that gives practice with the N-400 questions and the 100 questions.

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK, so the N-400 questions, I actually got more-- I really like the Ventures. I love Ventures, OK? But they have more the stuff that I think is pertinent more on the lower level, like the level 1 and the level 2 sections, OK? I see a lot more stuff. And then level three actually has a section in there about citizenship and US.

The citizenship for the N-400, I see it more based on the pre-2014 N-400. So some of the really, really gory type of vocabulary is not on there. But what's there is really, really helpful. And it's really good for warm ups and getting people to start talking and start manipulating, getting a little bit more grammar. Some people come to English through good grammar, and it's just really helpful. So I really like that. So again, Cambridge Ventures Arcade

Gretchen Bitterlin: Yeah, cambridge.org/venturesarcade. And it's free. And then it has practices, very simple practices for all the levels. But then there's a box labeled citizenship. And it's only citizenship questions. It's not very, very extensive, but it definitely gives some practice and it's free.

Jennifer Gagliardi: You know what's really good is the reading section. And when you do the dictation, there are some words that people can't catch. And they really appreciate that.

Gretchen Bitterlin: Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Yeah, they really appreciate that.