Rita Soledad Fernandez

Dr. Ingman

Language and Language Development

13 November 2017

Final Project: Interview with an Immigrant

I interviewed an 8th grade student at my school, Camino Nuevo Charter Sandra Cisneros

Learning Academy. This student immigrated to the United States from El Salvador in October of

last year. Since she still feels most comfortable speaking in her native language, I conducted this

interview in Spanish one morning before she started school.

I choose to interview Helena (name has been changed to protect her privacy) because I

wanted information about what it is like to learn English as a middle school student on our

campus. Though my school has many English Language Learners, I wanted to interview Helena

because I taught her in the 7th grade. I would have never been able to categorize her using

Krashen’s Language Acquisition stages because I made sure to provide her with Spanish

translated materials, sat her next to bilingual students and encouraged her to answer questions in

Spanish. However, her other middle school teachers would have categorized her as being in the

Silent/Receptive Stage since she did not talk or participate much in their classes last year. I was

curious to see how she had changed within one year.

During my interview, I learned about how Helena’s academic life in the United States

compared to her academic life in El Salvador. In El Salvador, she went to school from the 1st

grade to the 6th grade. She went to school from 6am to 12pm with 15 students in a class. She

only had four different classes which were math, science, physical education and art. If she had
stayed in El Salvador, she would have started to learn English in the 6th grade. She shared that

she appreciated that in the United States she was expected to work on computers every day

compared to having to use a notebook and pencil in El Salvador. When I asked Helena, what was

the worse student behavior she observed while in her native country, she said a boy once choked

himself to death after a female student said she did not like him. She seemed to be embarrassed

as she shared “Everything in El Salvador is more extreme.” She continued to say that the worse

behavior she had seen at our school were students having private conversations while the teacher

was talking.

I was happy to hear that Helena described her English learning experience positively. She

shared that she appreciates that almost everyone at our school can speak Spanish and often talks

to her in Spanish. She appreciates that students acknowledge that she knows a lot in Spanish and

will ask her for help in Spanish and in exchange they will help her translate her responses into

English. It seems that Helena is an example of the Affective Filter Hypothesis since she shared

that it is important to believe in your ability to learn a second language. She stated the following

in Spanish, “I know I will learn English within three years because I have already learned so

much in one year.” She is grateful that there are many words in English that sound very familiar

in Spanish. When I asked her for an example, she shared that energía is Spanish for the English

word energy and continued to give me the following examples in Spanish: animal, conclusion,

decision, formula, idea, normal, and principal. I was impressed with how many words she was

able to identify and wondered whether her cognitive academic language proficiency will develop

at a faster rate due to the many English-Spanish cognates.

Helena also shared with me some of the challenges she has faced while learning English.

She will always remember her first day of school since she was overwhelmed by the size of the
campus. She sat down on the lunch benches and watched as the elementary school teachers

picked up their students. Eventually a campus aide asked her why she wasn’t in class and she

told him in Spanish that it was her first day and she did not know where to go. He explained to

her in Spanish that the middle school classrooms are on the third floor and pointed to a staircase.

She eventually found her way to the third floor but did not know what classroom to enter. She sat

down in the hallway until another campus aide found her and led her to a classroom. She felt

very embarrassed walking into class late and unable to explain to the teacher in English what had

happened but quickly got over her embarrassment when students started asking her questions in

Spanish. Helena also expressed that though the Rossetta Stone and Dualingo software have been

useful in teaching her vocabulary her basic interpersonal communication skills have improved

most while talking to her cousins or other patient people. She has learned how to ask people how

they are doing and about their weekend by interacting face-to-face with peers and adults. Helena

feels most confident speaking in English when someone immediately corrects her pronunciation.

Helena’s preference for face-to-face interaction is evidence for the Discourse Theory. When I

explained to Helena Krashen’s Five Stages of Language Acquisition, she shared that she

believed she was in the third stage of Speech Emergence since she can speak short English

phrases. She also has found writing English challenging because she says there are so many

different spelling rules compared to Spanish.

I found Helena’s comments about remaining bilingual very interesting. When I heard her

attribute her 6-year old sister’s ability to speak more English to the fact that her sister does not

know as much Spanish as Helena, I thought Helena may be striving to speak English only.

However, she clarified that she wants to be bilingual, so she can “speak Spanish with her family

and have a career.” It seems that Helena thinks the Spanish she used in El Salvador is not
academic Spanish and she appreciates learning “correct Spanish in the United States.” When I

explained to her that different regions speak different dialects of Spanish and that they are all

correct, Helena expressed wanting to speak the Spanish used in the school dictionaries. I asked

her if she would prefer learning the 8th grade content in Spanish instead of English but she said

she prefers learning the content in English because she is exposed to more vocabulary and she

has the support of peers who translate whatever she does not understand. She expressed learning

from teachers who are bilingual easier than learning from teachers who spoke English only

because her English only teachers were less likely to check for her understanding. Helena seems

to prefer learning the English vocabulary for the Spanish terms that she has already mastered and

considers learning new content in Spanish easier than English. Helena’s learning preferences are

supportive of the research establishing the accuracy of cross-linguistic transfer theory.

At the culmination of interviewing Helena, I thought about how fortunate she was to be

able to attend a school where bilingualism is valued both by students and staff. Her experience

thus far has been positive due to the support of bilingual members of the school community. I am

confident that if she attends one of the Camino Nuevo high schools that she will eventually

achieve her goal of becoming a paramedic.