<p>The purpose of this narrative inquiry is to portray a complex picture of Mexican origin immigrants living in the United States. This study portrays their lives, their experiences, and their thought processes from the moment they made their life-changing decision to immigrate to the USA until their current realities of life in the American Midwest. The stories discussed and the interpretations made are the result of oral interviews with four families conducted in their native language of Spanish. The personal experiences of the seven participants are familiar to thousands of immigrants who arrive to the USA daily. Although these immigrants experience a great deal of hardship, they also develop a strong layer of resilience and solidarity with each other. The study also provides an in-depth analysis of key works of literature written by, and about, Mexican and Hispanic immigrants. These books are: <i>Con Respeto: Bridging the Distances Between Culturally Diverse Families and Schools, An Ethnographic Portrait </i>(Valdés, 1996); <i>Of Borders and Dreams: A Mexican-American Experience of Urban Education </i>(Carger, 1996)<i>; The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child </i>(Jiménez, 1997)<i>; The Undocumented Americans</i> (Cornejo Villavicencio, 2020)<i>; </i>and <i>The House on Mango Street</i> (Cisneros, 1984). The experiences portrayed within these masterful works are then connected to those of the participants of this narrative inquiry. Additionally, connections are made by the researcher, a scholar of Mexican origin living in the American Midwest. This work illustrates why people choose to emigrate, their family and gender roles, their focus on educating the next generation, and their strong religious faith. It also depicts their challenges, fears, and resilience as they navigate living “between two worlds.”<br></p><p></p>

in English with English title of the thesis: Language of SMS and French as a foreign language The central topic of the thesis is the language of short text messages (SMS) and/or the one of chat and their application in teaching of French as a foreign language (fr. abbreviation F.L.E., français langue étrangère). The aim is to answer the question so as to how to grasp linguo- didactically this modern sociolect of young users (not only) of French, typical of written communication via digital technologies, with the purpose of the purely practical use in the classes of French. Firstly, a linguistic description will be given in order to understand the mechanisms of the explored language code not only in French, but also partly in Czech and English, as well as the determination of the position of the SMS language as a socio-cultural phenomenon in the present-day French. The following research will be dealing with the identification and the analysis of the teaching activities using the SMS language found in approximately fifty text books of French intended for the learners of levels A1, A2, B1, B2. The next section offers the theoretical evaluation of the exploitability of the SMS language in the classes of French, having as a point of reference specialised works of didactics of foreign languages. The...