Taylor Manrique

ELL/ESL Student Interviews

T&L 333
October 1, 2017

The person I chose to interview for this assignment is Karyna Foia. Before she came to

the United States, Karyna spent the first twelve years of her life in Ukraine, Russia, which means

her first language was Russian. This interview took place Thursday September 28, 2017 at

7:00pm via FaceTime(since she is 3 hours away in Yakima). Karyna did not feel comfortable

being audio recorded for this interview, so I just took notes as she responded to my questions.

The girl I chose to interview for this assignment, Karyna, is a very close friend from home who I

attended high school with and still have frequent contact with. I chose to interview Karyna

because she has shared with me before how hard it was to come to America and not known

any English and how hard it was to learn it, she experienced everything an ELL student that I

could have in the future will experience. It was also easy to interview Karyna since she is a close

friend, so asking her questions was easy and comfortable and she felt comfortable answering

them.

During this interview with Karyna, the biggest thing I took away from the questions she

answered, was the fact that learning a new language is so much more than just learning the

language, it’s having to adapt to a completely new environment with completely new people.

Karyna expressed to me in her answers just how hard it was, not only learning the drastically

different syntax of English, but how hard it was being around new people who thought less of

her because she could not speak English. Fortunately for Karyna, she had a great teacher who

genuinely cared about her succeeding in her first American school and was willing to do
whatever necessary to help her do so. When asking Karyna the first four questions about

language, I was able to get an understanding of just what she believes language is. She, like

many others, believes that language is how everyone communicates with each other, but there

are many different forms of it. Karyna also mentioned to me that if she was to teach a new

language to an ELL student, she would use the same approach her teacher Mr. Beck did. She

would use patience, understanding, and compassion like Mr. Beck did with her, which was vital

in her learning a new language. Karyna said that knowing and using a language is very complex,

because you do not just have to understand the language, but you have to understand it in the

context that the people you are surrounded with use it in, which was very hard for her to do

trying to learning to learn English in school. Also from interviewing Karyna, I was able to see

connections between her answers and concepts we have talked about in class/read in our

books. Karyna is the perfect example of a current ELL student who displays and maintains

Additive Bilingualism, which means she is able to not only speak English as her second

language, but she is able to do that without losing her home language(Wright, 2010, p. 21).

Even after being a US citizen for over ten years, Karyna is still able to speak Russian fluently

with her mother and family members at home, while still being fluent in English. When Karyna

was telling me about her first ELL teacher, she spoke very high of him. She said that he, Mr.

Beck, was very patient with her and really just wanted her to succeed. He even bought her

Rosetta Stone with his own money so she could have extra practice with English at home.

Under first language acquisitions theories, psychologist B.F Skinner mentions in his behavioral

theory that children learn languages through “imitation and positive reinforcement”(Skinner,

1940, p. 49). Karyna was able to learn English faster and more efficiently by having positive
reinforcement from Mr. Beck, as well as imitation from her peers and from audio tapes from

Rosetta Stone. She said that Mr. Beck had the most positive influence on her learning to speak

language. When she was about ten, Karyna was finally able to speak enough English to have a

conversation with the people around her. At this point in her life, Karyna acquired Language

Socialization, which means she had obtained the knowledge in order to participate English

effectively in her new community(Langman, 2008, p. 58). She had finally had enough practice

with school and Rosetta Stone, that she was able to communicate to the point where she could

hold a conversation in English. I was very surprised by just how many concepts we have read

about that related directly to the answers Karyna gave me during her interview.

Second language teaching is a tough thing to do. In order to teach a second language,

and do it effectively, teachers must first be completely committed to teaching the language and

committed to their ELL/ESL student succeeding. Teachers must be able to evaluate an ELL/ESL

student’s reading, writing and speaking abilities in order to determine what level they are at.

However, the biggest and most important thing about (second) language teaching, is

understanding the student’s experiences and cultural backgrounds, that way you can

understand how a student communicates and interacts with others.

Based on what I have learned from interviewing Karyna and learning about her

experiences as an ELL student, I will teach my future ELL students with the same patience,

understanding, and compassion that Mr. Becks did with Karyna. By using these strategies, I

hope that my students feel comfortable and feel like they are accomplishing a goal when they

learn from me. I want to have an impact on my future students as Mr. Beck had on Karyna,

which she still remembers after all of these years. I believe that patience, understanding, and
compassion are the most important strategies you can use when teaching, not just a second

language, but when teaching all students. Overall, this interview with Karyna was a great way

for me to get a first-hand look of what exactly an ELL/ESL student goes through when they are

trying to learn a second language.

 Appendix

1. What is a language?
“Language is the how everyone communicates, but it comes in all different forms”

2. What components form a language?

“Culture, where the language is from, and syntax, how the words are arranged”

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

“It is understanding the language yourself, and being able to teach it to someone
else in a way they are able to understand it and be able to use it in everyday life”

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

“Knowing a language is knowing all forms that come with it, using a language is
being able to talk fluently to a person who English is there first language”

5. At what age did you start to learn English?

a. Did you learn English because you wanted to, or were there other contributing
circumstances?
b. Where did you learn English
“10 years old, I moved because my mom was getting married to a man from the US.
I learned English through Rosetta Stone mostly, but also from school at West Valley
Elementary”
6. When learning English, what was the most helpful strategy or learning activity?
“Rosetta Stone helped me the most, which is an audio learning system”

7. How beneficial is your second language? For example, does knowing your second
language provide you with more opportunities? Why or why not?
“Russian is not very beneficial because I can only use it at home with my mom, and it
has not provided me with any opportunities because I have not many or really any
people who speak Russian in Yakima”

8. Who is your favorite ELL/ESL teacher and why?

“Mr. Beck because he cared about me succeeding, he even bought me Rosetta Stone
with his own money so I could practice more at home with my mom”

9. What language do you feel most confident in speaking?

“English because I use it on a daily basis and I have used it as my primary language
for many years now”

10. As a non-native English speaker, do you feel looked down upon or underestimated
because English is not your native language?
 “Yes, because look at me as though I am not intelligent because I did not originally
speak English, so they automatically assume I did not have a good education before I
came to the US”

11. What is the best part about knowing a second (or third) language?
“I can communicate with more people since I know 2 languages, more than if I only
spoke one”

12. Do you ever confuse the grammar rules of the two languages? In what ways?
“Yes, when I was younger I did because English syntax is so much different then
syntax of Russian. The sentences would look backwards when I first started learning”

13. What was the most difficult part of language learning and why?
“Being able to interact with others comfortably and transfer through the process of
one different language and saying it in another”

14. What was the hardest part about learning English? (Reading, writing, speaking)
“writing because English words have so many different ways of spelling them and it
would get very confusing”

15. What is the most effective learning style/approach that helped you learn in the
class? (Visuals, audios etc.)
“audios, because I was able to listen to a word, repeat it, then the program would
tell me how to sound it out and spell it”
 References
Wright, Wayne E. Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners. Caslon Publishing:

Philadelphia, 2010. Pp. 21, 49, 58. Second Edition.