Katy Larson

ELL Interview Reflection

September 26, 2016

I interviewed an ELL student who was born in and grew up in Poland, until she

moved to the United States in elementary school. She is a close friend of mine here in

college, and her name is Sara Corral. Sara is a junior at WSU. I just recently learned that

she grew up in Poland, and is fluent in Polish, which surprised me so much because I

never would have guessed that she is bilingual and had this amazing childhood in a

completely different country. My roommate (Emma Couch), who is also taking Teaching

& Learning 333 in another section, interviewed Sara with me. We did this because Sara is

the only ELL student that we know, and we wanted to do the interview together so Sara

wouldn’t have to spend two hours of her time helping us out. Even though we conducted

the interview together, we asked our own questions and took turns. Sara provided me

with some very interesting and valuable information about ELL students that I never

would have understood without talking to her about her firsthand experiences as a child.

Interviewing her will definitely help me become a better teacher someday, because now I

understand the experiences that someone I know and care about went through while

learning English, and how much her culture means to her.

I learned a variety of information about Sara and ELL students. To summarize the

questions that I asked in the interview, I learned that learning English and sharing her

cultural background with her friends has been a very positive experience and childhood

for Sara. For example, Sara said that she mostly remembers being excited to share her

native language with other kids when she was asked to speak in Polish. She felt important

and special from being different and having the opportunity to share such different
experiences about her than other kids in her class might have had. Sara also mentioned

that she does not use Polish around her friends and family unless she is asked about it,

because she feels annoying (even though everyone thinks it is so cool and different!).

Some interesting information that she gave me was that she realized that she thinks in

neither English nor Polish. This is interesting to me, as I only speak one language, and

have it has never even crossed my mind that some people may think in a certain language

if they are bilingual. Sara also said that she “code switches” frequently mostly when

talking to her mom (Wright 36). She does not code switch unless she is talking to her

Polish family, or her mom, just because there is no need to speak Polish around her

friends here. She also mentioned that the Polish language is much more complex, because

words have genders, where in English they do not. Sara always has had a harder time

with writing than speaking, but she says that this happens to her in both languages. She

mentioned something interesting about how she always thinks about counting in her most

comfortable language, and that is the easiest subject for her.

Some other interesting information that I learned about Sara was the stereotypes

that she’s heard about both countries that she has lived in, from the other country. For

example, she mentioned what the US thinks about Poland. She said that she has heard

stereotypes like that they drink alcohol excessively, that the Nazi’s killed them, and that

they are all sausage lovers. She didn’t disagree with these statements, but said that

everyone is different and they don’t all drink and only eat sausage there. On the other

hand, when she is in Poland, she hears stereotypes about Americans. She told me that her

friends all thought that her dad was African American, not white, and were surprised to
find that he was white. She said that she also hears that all we eat is hamburgers and

French fries, excessively.

After interviewing Sara and learning about the ways that she learned English

while growing up in Poland, I discovered some useful strategies that I may use one day as

a teacher of ELL students to make their learning environment a positive and opportunistic

place. Sara learns best through visuals, so I want to teach using visual aids at all times,

for not only ELL students who need visuals for their academic success, but for any

student who may learn better through visual teaching. Furthermore, I will teach by

explaining myself thoroughly and use repetition as much as necessary for the students

who need it. Using intentional pauses in my speech, and pointing out important main

points will help my ELL students to understand what they need to focus on. Finally, I will

be a teacher that honors and celebrates every culture of my students. I want the classroom

to be a positive environment that celebrates each child’s unique differences and

backgrounds, because their cultural background is what makes them so special and

unique in their own way, and that should always be celebrated, respected and used in a

learning environment.

Works Cited

Wright, Wayne E. Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research,

Theory, Policy, and Practice. Philadelphia: Caslon Pub., 2010. Print.

ELL interview questions: Sara Corral

1. What is a language?
A background of culture, how people express them self, noises.

2. What components form a language?

Alphabet, tense, and pronunciation.

3. What is a language and how would you teach it?

Take them to the place where it is spoken is the best way; expose them to TV,
books, people. My mom did a really good job doing this for my while growing up, so I
picked up on English pretty easily.

4. What does it mean to know and use a language?

Feeling comfortable switching back and forth between the two languages that I
know.

3. What were your experiences leaning?

I don’t really remember, mostly just exciting and feeling important when kids would
want to hear my native language. I always remember having a hard time writing for sure.

5. Do you feel like a different person when you use different languages?
Not really, I just feel foreign.

6. What was the hardest part about learning a language?

When to use what tense, verbs were hard to learn. The polish language is so much
more complex, words have genders in Polish and they don’t in English.

7. How do you learn most efficiently?

Visually and by practing and going over, I am good at teaching myself, I always
have been.

8. What’s your previous education with English?

I learned some while growing up, so it was not too hard for me to adapt once I
moved to America.
9. What language do you thing in?
I don’t think in a language… I don’t know why but I can’t figure out which
language I think in, because I don’t think in either.
10. Do you code switch?
Yes, when talking to my mom or my mom’s side of the family.
11. Do you use polish when you are around people other than your family?
No I feel annoying about it.

12. Do you like when people ask you to speak in Polish?

 Yes I think its fun to share it with other people who haven’t heard it, and it
usually surprises them that I can speak it because I don’t tell tons of people that I am
from Poland unless they ask.

13. Do you ever have an experience where you feel like polish is more efficient?
Now I use English more than Polish because in college especially that’s all I
speak, as all my friends speak English and there is not use for Polish here. Polish is more
efficient with my mom, sometimes. It doesn’t really matter.

14. Do you have a specific dialect and is it hard to switch between the two?
There’s really only two dialects the mountains sound a little different but I speak
the majority.

15. Have you heard any stereotypes about Polish people while in America?
We drink a lot, the Nazis killed us, and we are all sausage lovers. But I wouldn’t
disagree with these things because they are all true in a sense. Except everyone is
different, obviously.

16. Vice Versa?

They expected my dad to be African American, they teased about the
discrimination in the US, they said that we only eat hamburgers and French fries
and joked about the obesity of Americans.

17. Do the majority of your family members speak English?

Yes, my dad has a bigger family than my mom’s side, and my dad is from the US,
so most of my family speaks English.

18. How did your parents meet eachother?

They met in Bosnia. My mom was an interpreter and my dad requested my mom
to interpret for him because he really liked her.

Other interesting information:

Sara- “you always go back to counting in your most comfortable language”
She has the hardest time with writing out of all the subjects, but she also does in English,
not just Polish.