Delaney Bartlett

Teaching and Learning 333

ELL Student Interview
September 20th, 2017
Balancing and Incorporating Cultures

For my ELL student interview, I chose to interview one of my sorority sisters, Kajal

Chandu Sabhaya. Her native language is Gujrati, a dialect of Indian. She is from Gujrat, a small

town in India. My interview took place on September 19th, 2017 at 8:23PM in our formal dining

room at our house. Kajal is a fellow sorority sister, close friend, and fellow officer in our Greek

chapter here at WSU. I chose to interview her because I know that she speaks multiple languages

and is a very cultured individual. Kajal is the academics chairman of our chapter and is also the

President of the WSU Indian Association.

One of the themes that I noticed through interviewing Kajal was the idea of staying

actively involved in both cultures and keeping them balanced. In being in a sorority, Kajal is

surrounded by English language speakers who are not very familiar with her culture and know

almost nothing about Gujrati or the cultural struggles that Kajal may face. She balances these

struggles out by also being a part of the WSU Indian Association. In doing this, Kajal

experiences the English culture that she is surrounded by, and is also actively incorporating her

native culture. She is actively involved in both cultures, as she is a chairman in our Greek

chapter, and is President of the WSU Indian Association. Kajal quotes, “I dabble in both

languages and cultures, and I try to keep myself balanced in each. They are both very prominent

aspects of my life and although they are very different, I have found ways to balance and connect

them”(Sabhaya, 2017). In this quote Kajal explains how both her English and Indian cultures can

be hard to connect at times, but she tries her best to connect them both and find common ground

between the two of them.

 I never thought about how hard it must be for Kajal to find connections here at WSU to

her Indian culture. Kajal also explained how she often forgets or loses her native Gujrat language

when she is away at school because she does not use it as much as she does when she is back

home with her family. She explains, “When I am at WSU and away from my family, I forget

how to say certain things. When I go home I tend to pronounce things differently or say the

wrong words in the wrong places because I get so used to speaking English nonstop” (Sabhaya,

2017). This is something that those who have English as their first language often don’t think

about or consider when it comes to those who are bilingual in college. Kajal does not often

practice her native language when she is here at WSU, other than when she talks on the phone

with her family or meets others who speak her native language. Thus explained, one can

understand that she would get so used to speaking English that she would forget the grammar,

vocabulary, and sentence structure of her native language when she is away. This idea is shown

in the video that we watched in class titled “Things Bilingual People Do” (Lim, 2015), as in the

video some of the bilingual individuals have trouble translating one language to another and

struggle to find a word that has the same meaning between the two languages. As Kajal

explained, she often forgets certain vocabulary words and has trouble explaining and translating

things to her family who is not as familiar with the English language as she is.

This theme truly taught me how important it is to prominently incorporate one’s cultures

into their lives and be actively involved in the cultures. In Kajal’s example, she does not practice

her Gujrat language often when she is away at school, and therefore forgets aspects of it and

struggles when she returns to it. As a future teacher, this taught me that it is important to allow

my students to incorporate their native cultures, languages, and ideas into their learning as much

as possible so that they are not only practicing it at home, and therefore better familiarizing
themselves with the cultures as much as possible. In doing this, my students are not just

practicing one culture constantly at one place, and can then better understand how to incorporate

the cultures into each other. By actively incorporating their native culture in school, they can also

incorporate what they learn in school into their native culture and make connections between the

two. This would then encourage critical thinking and active learning into my classroom and help

my students to better understand my teaching.

Another common theme introduced to me through interviewing Kajal was her lack of

confidence because English is her second language. She quotes,

“I still have a really hard time writing, as I picked up speaking English much faster than I

did writing in English. Writing in English was awful for me, especially when I was

applying to colleges, because my parents both went to college in India and had no idea

how to even approach an American college application. My parents also aren’t literate in

English, so they couldn’t even proofread my high school or college essays and

applications. I want to go into the medical field, but I’m worried that my English literacy

skills won’t be good enough, and that will be a huge downfall for me. It really frustrates

me and gets me down a lot, and it’s something that I can’t talk to my parents about.”

(Sabhaya, 2017)

Hearing that one of my friends and sorority sisters felt frustrated and as though she could not

succeed because of culture was something that I did not expect to hear about when doing my

interview. I was certainly glad that she felt comfortable enough to share her frustrations with her

culture and background, but hearing about how she had a lack of confidence because of it was

sad to hear. I never would have thought that Kajal’s parents being illiterate in English would

influence her future in the medical field, and play such a huge part in her self-confidence. This
taught me that bilingual speakers may all have different backgrounds regarding English, and that

their families English skills have a major influence on their English skills. Kajal’s parents being

illiterate in English caused her to struggle with her English literacy, and have a lack of

confidence for her future.

As a future teacher, my interview with Kajal taught me that although I may understand

my bilingual student’s English skills, it is also very important to understand their family’s

English skills, as it most likely has a direct impact on my student. It also taught me as a future

teacher to really consider the frustrations of my bilingual students and how I can help them.

Instead of looking at just their vocabulary, social skills, and test scores, it is also important to

understand their feelings regarding the English language and what they feel their strengths and

weaknesses are. This not only helps me understand them as their teacher, but also helps them

understand themselves as a student and what resources, aspects, and ideas they should focus on

as a student.

After conducting my interview, I believe that second language teaching is far more than

just teaching a student vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, and how to use another

language. It is also teaching them about themselves as a learner and about how they can connect

ideas and aspects to each other from both cultures and how to stay actively involved with both

cultures. When asking Kajal what second language teaching meant to her, she explained that “It

means that you can effectively communicate with a different group or array of people, but that

communication largely depends how you relay and incorporate situations into each other”

(Sabhaya, 2017).

I would teach a new language by starting out with the alphabet and teaching them some

simple vocabulary words for the language. Through this I would go at a steady pace, using
actions, descriptions, music, and as many visual representations as possible. Through doing this I

would hope that my students contain communicative competence. Our class textbook discusses

what it means to actually “know” a language and how communicative competence is extremely

important from a sociocultural perspective. It quotes “knowing a language means being able to

use it to communicate effectively and appropriately with other speakers of the language.”

(Wright, 2015, 36). These competences include grammatical competence, discourse competence,

sociolinguistic competence, and strategic competence, all of which I would hope that I could

effectively teach my students through finding cross-cultural differences and similarities, and

making their learning as interactive and engaging as possible for them. I would hope that by

connecting the two cultures and making it more relative to their personal perspective that they

would be more engaged with my teaching. In teaching this way I would most likely use

communicative language teaching, this method relies on communicative competence and focuses

largely on meaningful communication instead of the more specific perfect communication

(Wright, 2015, 61). I feel for elementary students this would be effective, as it focuses less on the

perfection of the language and more on effectively communicating. I feel that they would perfect

the language as they get older, as middle school and high school classes focus largely on

grammar, whereas elementary focuses on laying a firm foundation of vocabulary and the basics

of the language. In Kajal’s situation, I feel this would be particularly effective as she would start

off her language learning with a solid foundation and receive the adequate baseline that the rest

of her learning could build from.

 References

Lim, S. (Producer). (2015, March 4). Things Bilingual People Do (Video file).

Sabhaya, K. C. (2017, September 19). ELL Student Interview (Personal Interview).

Wright, W. E. (2015). Foundations for teaching English language learners: research,

theory, policy, and practice. Philadelphia: Caslon Publishing.
 Appendix

1) What is a language?
2) What components form a language?
3) What is teaching a language and how would you teach it?
4) What does it mean to know and use a language?
5) Do you alternate between languages during conversations and does it help? Why or why
not?
6) How long did it take you to get used to English? Confidence? Fluent?
7) What about the language was the easiest to learn? (Reading, writing etc.)
8) Have you noticed any extreme cultural differences? If yes, can you provide examples?
9) What are some language difficulties you face at home?
10) Has learning a new language interfered with remembering or using your native language?
Why or why not?
11) If you had to learn a language over again, what would you do differently?
12) Do you feel a sense of connection with individuals who speak the same language,
regardless of the country they are from? Why or why not?
13) Have you tried to integrate the two cultures together? (Acculturation) Why or why not?
14) As a non-native English speaker do you feel looked down upon or underestimated
because English is not your native language?
15) What was the most positive aspect of learning English?