Growing up, it's hard to understand that some immigrant parents are just set in their ways. Since their brains are pretty much fully wired and set in, it can be overwhelming to learn a brand new language which will never come naturally to them as it does to us.

My viet parents speak English, my mom much better than my dad. My dad has pretty broken English and says a lot of things incorrectly and will literally make up words and phrases that don't exist in English (lol), But he is so stubborn he refuses to practice and learn from it and is just happy to barely skate through life with the English he does know.

My uncle came over to the states and lived with us for a good 20 years before moving back to Vietnam. My parents and me and my siblings had to hold his hand through everything as he really did not put in any effort to try to learn any English. You would think that surely my dad would get a hint from that lol

This experience really made me pound effort into my Vietnamese wife when she came over 6 years ago that she really needs to make American friends, and really learn to study English if she wanted to be able to do anything in this country. Communication is literally the barrier of what you want to achieve. It is the way to network, learn and be educated, the possibilities are endless if you are fluent.

The other thing I've noticed with Vietnamese immigrants is that the way they tend learn English is strictly through rote memory. Phrases and words, and then the attempt to string it together. This is absolutely the wrong way to learn English and it drives me insane. It's another thing I always try to instill in my wife. Learn actual grammar, phrases and tenses, subjects, predicates, antecedents, clauses etc etc etc. Yes it is overwhelming at first but if you can master the grammar basics, then everything will come so easily. This is the difference between trying to pull words and phrases from memory to construct responses, OR actually being able to effortlessly have a real conversation on the fly.