Language Partners Program
The fall semester of 2023 I became aware of a program in Honors 201 called the Language Partners Program. Right away I knew it was something that I wanted to do since I enjoy meeting new people and learning about their culture and experiences. The Language Partners Program provided me the opportunity to see the challenges facing students who did not speak English as their primary language and allowed me to learn about countries and cultures different from my own. Throughout the semester I learned a lot about intercultural engagement and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
The objective of the Language Partners Program is to help students who do not speak English as a first language by assigning them a peer to help them transition to being able to understand English enough to successfully complete their secondary education. At the conclusion of the program, we did an ethnographic interview as a final activity. The students I was paired with were participating in the Language Partners Program as part of the Intensive English Program (IEP), which culminates with exams that test their proficiency in English to see if the students are ready to enroll in undergraduate programs. Because of this I wanted to make sure I was not just socializing with other college students and getting distracted from the ultimate purpose of the program. Having been in Germany where I was only vaguely acquainted with the language, I know how difficult it can be to understand everyday conversation, let alone obtain an undergraduate degree in one’s secondary language.
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The format of the program was relatively loose with a general outline for activities to do each week consisting of discussion questions, videos, and short articles. There was complete freedom in what we chose to do as long as we meet two hours each week. The first surprise I encountered was finding out that I would have two partners instead of one. I was not necessarily intimidated by the prospect of having two partners, but I was weary of the fact it would limit flexibility in meeting availability, I alone already had an extremely busy schedule. It did turn out to be a challenge as we agreed on a time to meet every week, but one of my partners had to stay on campus an extra two hours waiting for the meeting; unfortunately, we could not find another time that we both had available.
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One of my partners was from Vietnam and the other was from Japan. The first few meetings consisted of very limited dialogue. I would ask them the discussion questions for the week and receive one- or two-word answers for lengthy questions. In retrospect I think there were three reasons for this. Naturally the first is English not being their first language. The second I think was general comfort level being lower with someone new. The third reason was completely my fault. I came into the program with the notion that if I took notes, I would be able to identify areas more accurately where they needed help and track their progress. What was intended to be helpful, was in reality intimidating for my partners. I knew based on communication during discussion topics that they were both fairly reserved, but by the third week I also got the sense from their composure and facial expressions that something was out of the ordinary. It finally dawned on me that by sitting and jotting things down I could be making them uncomfortable. I asked them if this was the case, it was, so that was the end of my note taking. I think this was more of an individual communication misunderstanding instead of indicative of any larger cultural differences. They never said anything that indicated writing while talking to someone is an abnormality in either of their cultures. I feel like generally people would likely be somewhat caught off guard by someone writing stuff down shortly after meeting them, it was just a situation where you need to read the room.
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After the third week the discussions started to open up more. It was most likely a mixture of me not taking notes, familiarity, and practice. I also started to rely more on reading their facial expressions to help determine what they were trying to communicate. Sometimes this would entail them trying to think of a word or phrase and I would shoot out ideas till their look of uncertainty became more confident and they gave verbal confirmation that was what they were thinking of. Most importantly it helped me read what their feelings were when their expressions contradicted their words. I noticed one of my partners in particular did not like asking for help, or would indicate she understood something, but based on the inflection in her voice and her posture, I started to be able to decipher when she was uncertain about something. I believe this is a testament to the usefulness of nonverbal communication when interacting with people who speak different languages. You may not always correctly interpret what they are conveying, but I find gestures and analyzing people’s facial expressions immensely helpful in understanding how people feel.
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I mentioned previously that we conducted an ethnographic interview as a final project, however, the interview felt like more of an educational formality than a natural and robust discourse. It was intended to be simply a continuation of the prior conversations we had, unscripted and free flowing consisting of the questions we thought had generated the most discussion. However, because my partners were graded on this, they were very keen on being prepared and knowing exactly what was being said, by who, and when. The best conversations occurred in the weekly conversations where the provided questions often sparked much deeper conversation. I think probably the most interesting thing I learned from them was that fast food is less prevalent in their country’s diet and generally seen as more of a rarity. Also relating to food, both my partners found U.S. serving sizes to be much larger, which I thought was interesting because it seems like restaurants have been decreasing the serving sizes over the last few years.
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On a slightly deeper level I learned two things that stuck out. First that that my partners think in general Vietnamese and Japanese cultural associate health more with dieting and nutrition than with exercising. Second, that in Vietnam some of the country is undergoing a lot of industrialization right now that is leading to concerns of soil erosion and deforestation. I know very little about Vietnam besides a little bit about the country’s history from gaining independence from France to the Vietnam War. From that I know much of Vietnam is a tropical climate and densely forested. My partner attributed the growing tourism industry to part of the reason for industrialization, which is not something I likely would have guessed, but makes sense considering the increasingly globalized trajectory of the world. The cultural differences extended further than just national differences. I was the only one out of the three of us who was religious, and my partners were both very interested in how I reconciled my personal ambitions with religion and how religion influenced my everyday life and beliefs. I do not remember exactly every question I attempted to answer, but I do remember being surprised at the complexity of some of the questions and caught off guard by being asked the questions in general because the topic that day was not religion.
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Throughout the semester I always asked if they had any questions about any homework and I always got the same response, no. This was a little concerning because outside of verbal communication it was hard for me to determine if they needed help. I did not know if they needed help and were too afraid to ask, or if my weekly check-in was becoming a redundant formality. I decided the best way to gauge this was to ask them to write a two-paragraph response to what their favorite childhood memory was and then I would provide any necessary feedback. They both did great jobs, certainly much better than what I could string together in German. I was able to write some minor advice about word choice and sentence structure, and they were receptive and asked a few clarifying questions. This was more helpful than I could have anticipated because when we were studying for the IEP exams, they asked a lot more questions about structure and things I would not have considered.
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One major difference between my culture and my partners’ culture was the importance of a second language. Both my partners have studied English throughout most of their education, one since middle school and the other since elementary school. Conversely, I only had to take one year of a second language in high school. From my experience, U.S. students’ attitudes toward language in high school, at least public high schools, is not exactly what I would classify as the epitome of educationally oriented. A lot of students approach language classes as ones that they do not see a lot of importance in or just something they had to do the bare minimum and get it over with. Consequently, students with genuine interest in learning a second language can have their learning hindered by peers who are uninterested or distracted. Of course, I do not mean to posit this is the case for every high school in the U.S., but it certainly was in mine. I think it is hard to incentivize learning a second language for most students without it being a requirement, because extracurricular courses are typically not regarded with the same respect as core classes. English is often seen as an international language that can be used in business and as a common second languages for people with different languages to communicate. I think because it is a common second language, a lot of people from the U.S. do not see the need to learn a second language themselves.
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Overall, my biggest takeaway from this experience was about communication. When we started the program, we talked about culture shock and they both said they were in the frustration stage. Throughout the semester I gradually became aware of when I needed to slow down talking or try and rephrase a point to help communicate it. Both things I will take with me in future interactions with people who speak English as a second language. I also learned how to read body language a lot better, however everyone is different so my takeaway is, try to be aware if body language could be suggesting something different from words.