My Journey from Bland “White” Girl to Living Vicariously Through Learning the Languages of Other Fascinating Cultures

 And What it Taught me About Teaching and Learning Second Languages

 

Playing Fruit Ninja in China

I am jealous of people who grew up bi-culturally or learned different languages at a young age. I secretly want to be them because in comparison my background is boring and as an adult it is hard to learn a new language. I feel like I am starting late in the game. I grew up in a typical “English” only American home. My parents are the typical mixture of various Anglo cultures and the most interesting thing I can scrounge up about my family’s background is that my grandmother on my father’s side was half Irish. Unfortunately she had schizophrenia and was never a part of my life, so other than the knowledge that I am a quarter Irish, I have no interesting heritage to speak of. In Elementary school I hated those assignments that said to talk about your family’s heritage because no one in our family can give me any specific answer. We are a little Norwegian, German, Swedish, Irish, Scandinavian and like every other European culture where you can find “white” people. I love America, but I hate that here we have lost our heritage and any culture. I mean just because you marry inter-culturally does that mean you have to completely give up your culture? What even is Norwegian-German-Swedish-Irish-Scandinavian? I have so many different cultures that I have none; I’m just American. I love America, but the only culture we have is “melting pot”. Some people are unique blends in the pot like carrots and potatoes, but I am broth which has become a cloudy mixture of everything that was added to it originally. Sounds cool, tastes good, but has no real clear boundaries. This is seen in my least favorite activity; filling out forms. I hate having to fill those bubbles that define me as a color, “white” or worse “non-Hispanic.” Thank you for reminding me of my blandness and my failure to be born with a specific relatable ethnicity.

            Like many “white” Americans I didn’t learn another language until high school because of force. I feel starting this late makes for a stressful time, especially when I was told statistics such as, “If you start after age 14 you will never reach native status.” Thanks for the encouragement statistics. I took Spanish for 3 years. It was pretty grueling to learn another language at school because it was the most useless and boring way to learn a language. The only people we could speak it with were other “white” friends, so my experience with Spanish amounted to saying “yo quiero tu” and “hola mi amigo” to my friends with a bad accent. Even when I did come across someone who spoke Spanish I was too afraid to speak it with them. That fear of being wrong is the hardest part I find of learning another language. I later learned that that fear is common with new language learners.

            By the end of the 3 years of Spanish I felt like I knew next to nothing. At that naïve age I had actually expected 3 years to make me pretty fluent- wrong! I now know that in order to really learn a language you need to be immersed in it, which is why limiting your learning to school alone is so ineffective. With so many Spanish speakers in my hometown of San Diego you would think I would have many opportunities to practice Spanish, but it’s hard. The differences in culture and the fear of misunderstanding one another creates a disconnect between language learners and native speakers.

My Chinese boyfriend taught me to make some amazing dumplings

            After High School I lost interest in Spanish completely, but I was really fascinated by other cultures and especially wanted to travel to Asian countries. I took a trip for 1 week to India in my sophomore year of college and became really interested in Bollywood movies and music. Then, almost a year later, I started dating a boy from China who was working with me at Disneyland as part of an exchange program. Hanging out with him and his friends got me hooked on Chinese culture and learning about China. To me, China is the most fascinating culture and I really wanted to go to China and be a part of the culture in any way I could.

Friends from my Chinese Church

            I became fascinated with learning about Chinese culture and my friends started seeing me as the "China-girl". They all were convinced I would marry someone from China and move there forever. One day a friend mentioned to me that he was going to a Chinese church and I should come check it out. I started going to his church and stayed there for 2 ½ years, even becoming a member there. I was the only white female in the entire church, but I felt totally at home there. I loved the family culture and connection they had. Every holiday the entire church made food together and would celebrate. Every Sunday the church would also eat together after service. I would be at church from 9:30-3:00 on many days. That is the opposite of my “white” American culture experience growing up where we go to church on holidays and get out of there as soon as the preacher says “Amen.”  

College Graduation 2011

            After graduating college with a Bachelors in English, I continued at my same school, Biola University, to get my multiple subjects credential. The whole time I was anxious to go to China. I had been trying to learn Chinese from my friends at church, but it was really hard without constant practice. I figured when I went to China and could use the language for real I would learn. Then 1 year into my credential classes I decided to take a break and just go. I taught for 10 months in China at SIAS International University and it was an amazing experience, but it also was when my life took an unexpected turn.

Epcot Florida's China

            After years of wanting to become part of Chinese culture and live abroad in China I half-expected to find someone in China who had the same dream or who was Chinese and settle down with them.  I thought if I married someone who also wanted to live in China then I could learn Chinese fluently, speak it regularly and teach my children about Asian culture. Who knows, my plan could have worked out, but it didn’t. Two months before I left for China I started dating another “white” American, who had no intention to move to China. It really wasn’t my choice. You don't always chose who your soulmate is or when they enter your life. The happy end to that story was that we are married now, but that’s jumping ahead. He was understanding of my need to go to China and stayed in a long distance relationship with me for the entire 10 months that I was teaching in China.

Hubby and I on our Honeymoon at Disneyworld

            While I was in China I had a little bit of a shock. Chinese is hard to learn! I tried getting tutoring and taking Chinese classes, but I found it to be so boring to learn this way because it felt like rote memorization. My favorite way to learn Chinese was to take a book of survival Chinese phrases and just go into the market place and start talking. Somehow using Chinese in China was not scary for me like it had been in America. I noticed a lot of Chinese people were excited to practice English though, and sometimes that interfered with me speaking Chinese with them. I also noticed some Chinese people were afraid to speak English with me, just like I had been afraid to speak Spanish with native speakers in San Diego. I think it all depends on your level and self-confidence in pronunciation. I wish we could all just be really patient and understanding with one another so no one would ever be afraid to learn a new language. Some people are really harsh about it in America, probably because they never tried to learn another language before. It’s hard.

            I wish I had become fluent in Chinese while in China, but the truth is I think you do actually need some of that boring classroom stuff that I detested when learning Spanish. Sometimes practicing a language requires memorization or doing the same thing over and over. Most things worth achieving do take hard work and sometimes boring work. Though I could get around China pretty well and go shopping, I still can’t have an actual conversation about non-concrete things! Also I heard a lot of new words, but couldn’t spell them in pinyin (Roman alphabet) or read them in Chinese characters. So when I came back to America I signed up for a Chinese class to learn the things like grammar, reading, writing and conversation. I actually really enjoyed it. My teacher made us practice new questions every day writing them in Chinese characters, then reading them to another student in Chinese and responding to those student’s questions in Chinese. These exercises were more engaging than previous language experiences, and more effective. We also had to write a song about us in Chinese, which I really enjoyed. I still don’t enjoy flash cards, drawing characters over and over or other rote memorization techniques, but I love getting to practice the language once I have the vocabulary memorized.

            Back in America I went back to normal life and finished my teaching credential. Honestly I did not want to leave China, but living there kind of felt like a dream world rather than real life since all I ever grew up with is here in America. More importantly that guy I was dating was waiting for me in America too and when I came back we got married 2 years later.

Jury and I on Our Honeymoon at Disneyworld

            The results of this choice I made to marry an “American” means that I probably can’t live in China again anytime soon. I also had to stop attending my Chinese church because it was by my university in Orange County and I moved back to San Diego. Luckily, my husband understands my love of China and is willing to go there with me on travel, even staying for extended periods of time up to 2 or 3 months, but not for another year as I did before. This puts a corkscrew in my plans because it is extremely hard to learn Chinese without being surrounded by other native speakers. Moreover my old plan was to marry someone who would speak Chinese with me, but my husband is actually more inclined to speak Spanish! I believe things happen for a reason though. I am an idealist and I follow where I feel I am being lead to. Because of that, I don’t ever think of these choices as mistakes, but rather I wait to see where they are taking me. 

This may be as close as I get to China for now.
Terra Cotta Warriors at Epcot in Florida

            Right now ironically my Spanish, which I felt was boring, is now becoming very useful. I work at an Elementary school where more than 50% speak Spanish and there are many students coming straight from Mexico with no background in English. I now enjoy speaking Spanish because I can use it to relate to my students. I want to learn more and I have the perfect opportunities to use it without fear, because I never fear being judged by loving little children. What’s more, my school has asked me to teach two different ELD classes to students who just came to America. They know I only know some Spanish, but they are trusting me with this job to teach 2^nd-6^th graders basic English.This will be a new challenge for me where I will need to rely on my experiences with language to help them. I am excited to use what I know to make learning fun and applicable to these young learners.

Though learning Spanish originally was often frustrating, I am very glad I took the 3 years. School is very good at teaching the “why” of the language and the grammar so I can now read Spanish pretty well. Though I haven’t used or practiced the language since High School, it comes to me pretty easily when I try to re-learn it. My goal now is to become fluent so I can speak with student’s parents. I haven’t given up on Chinese though.

I may not be able to live in China, until years from now when I retire or convince my husband, but I still want to learn to speak the language fluently and work with Chinese students. I was actually enrolled in a University to get my Masters in Chinese, until the school had some issues and wasn’t able to offer me enough courses to qualify me for financial aid. I also had a conversation partner for a while, but had to stop because of my work hours changing. It seems like right now life is taking me on a break from Chinese. I accept that break, but I won’t let it be forever. I still love China and want to speak Chinese where I work, even if that is in San Diego. Perhaps after I get more teaching experience and finish my masters in TESOL I can get a job again here in San Diego teaching English to Chinese students. I’d love to teach at an Elementary school that teaches Chinese to students as well, but those jobs are pretty rare right now. I hope in the future there will be more. For now I am focusing on getting the ropes with my first American teaching job and reviewing Spanish, which now seems like such an easy language compared to Mandarin.

My classroom where I get to teach English to 2nd-6th grade students

Well these are my experiences with language and culture up till now, I hope to have more in the future. My experiences help me with my students because now I relate to how difficult it is to learn a language, even when you really want to learn it. I know that being immersed in the language is highly important for fluency and that speaking your L1 (first language) too often will weaken L2 (Second Language) or prevent L2 from becoming strong in the first place. I also relate to how boring and frustrating learning a language can be when you are just starting with the basics. I understand how upsetting it is when you work so hard and pass the test in class, but you still can’t even have a normal conversation with a native speaker. Perhaps in my classes I can focus more on practical real-life vocabulary that is needed for conversation. Lastly, I understand how useful and fun it is to know a second language. Though the learning part can be hard, long and grueling, once you start to be able to speak the L2, its fun! I hope I can encourage my student’s to push past the hard or boring parts to get to the happy feeling of accomplishment that comes from speaking a new language.