02/07 Interview with Leah & Stacie
To understand how people learn and practice a second language in immersive environment, I interviewed Leah and Stacie and listened to their story. Although their experiences are quite similar, the big difference between two people is that the existence of personal interest in a culture;
Interview with Leah
Before coming to CMU, Leah didn’t live in any English-spoken country before. Although she learned English at school for more than 10 years (Well, it’s not just her. Every East Asian students learn English for a long time but their English proficiency is not good!), she didn’t use English outside the class. It’s been 6 months since she started using English in real life.
Last semester, she hired a private English tutor to improve her speaking skills, but now she doesn’t get tutoring anymore because she felt that what she learned during the tutoring sessions didn’t related well to her everyday life. In addition, considering the limited amount of time and the amount of money she paid, she thought tutoring was not efficient at all.
Leah said that she is still struggling from the fluency of speaking and academic writing. She’s not confident in both skills. She also has hard time in understanding the American culture, so she watches American TV shows every day. From this interview, I learned that without deep understanding of one’s pop culture, it’s hard to get motivation to try short conversations with local people.
Interview with Stacie
Unlike Leah, Stacie had a big interest in German language because of her family background (Her grandparents speak Pennsylvanian Deutsch) and could understand a little bit of German. However, she didn’t learn German until she had a chance to study abroad in Switzerland. She took a basic German course at CMU and instead of living in the dorm, she lived with an exchange student’s family.
Her experience of home stay helped her improve her German a lot. Stacie could learn basic conversation from the family and then she tried to practice what she learned at cafes and bakeries. She said that it is important not to be afraid of making mistakes. Although she did not fully understand the grammar rule, she had no problem in speaking with local people.
She’s not learning German anymore, but she still keeps in touch with her homestay family and college friends in Switzerland. She said that maintaining relationship with the local people gives her a motivation to use German.
