Hello Everyone!
For this blog entry, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing my sweet friend, Grace, a native speaker of Mandarin and 10-year veteran of teaching Mandarin at the high school level. Please click here to watch: Interview with a HS foreign language teacher
REFLECTION:
Before our interview, Grace and I reviewed the questions I would
be asking her just in case she had any problems with the vocabulary or content. In spite of our “pre-interview run through,” we
still had a few communication breakdowns, as clearly evidenced by her answers
to some of my questions. Whenever this
happened, I did my best to rephrase my question so that she would have a better
understanding of what I was asking. As I
later reflected on how the interview had unfolded, I was reminded of Long’s Interaction
Hypothesis (Ortega, 2009) and how my interaction with Grace was a good example of how two
speakers negotiate for meaning.
Grace’s method of administering corrective feedback to her
students was great. When giving oral exams to students in order to
check for correct pronunciation, she does not simply provide the correct answer
(e.g., recasting), but instead gives them clues as to how they may want to
change their answers (Harvey & Velasquez, unknown date). I really like this because it gives both she
and her student the opportunity to laugh and perhaps break some of the tension
and anxiety that comes with performance type of language assessments.
Ortega (2009, p. 148) indicates: “We all have admired someone who
seemed to have ‘an ear’ for foreign languages, ‘a knack’ for language
learning.” Grace mentioned “hearing” as
part of a student’s aptitude for learning Mandarin. This resonated with my own
L2 learning experience. I am a longtime vocalist and am particularly
adept at recognizing pitch and quality of sounds, especially birdcalls. Looking back, I believe that my aptitude for
sound helped me learn Spanish during my high school and college years. Grace also suggested that because she is a
native Mandarin speaker, her students have an advantage in their Mandarin learning
compared to what she experienced learning English from a native Mandarin
speaker (e.g., inauthentic English accent).
Being able to hear, and thus mimic, the authentic intonations and
accents of the target language is a valuable asset to any L2 learning
process.
One of the most useful personal insights I gained from this
interview is the value of negotiating for meaning. Sometimes having a conversation with someone
whose L1 is different than your own can be a little frustrating. However, taking the additional time necessary
to better understand each other is well worth the time.
