is key. It has to be something you are looking into using on a daily basis. One shouldn’t be afraid to expose themselves to as much authentic stuff as possible.
∞ There is absolutely no doubt that the method Pedro has been using for all these years – on his own as well as with his students – works wonders. However, according to my own experience as a learner and a teacher, pronunciation doesn’t have to be an absolute priority – especially for such an international language as English mostly spoken by non-native speakers with a wide variety of accents. Honestly, both as a learner and a teacher, I used to think of Phonetics (a branch of linguistics studying how sounds are produced) as my least favorite activity. As much as I realized how, as Pedro noted, pronunciaiton is key to making a good first impression, as someone with no ear for music, I was never fond of practising it. There has been a never-ending debate as to how to go about language learning and teaching, but what is for sure is that mimicing a certain English variety involves some identity work. Pedro has definitely succeeded in creating this «American» image and the way he speaks has a major role to play in projecting it.
A brave researcher willing to make sacrifices
(Jelena, Montenegro)
Languages spoken: Montenegrian, Croatin, Bosnian, Serbian, English, Russian.
Field of study/career: Marketing Management, Associate Professor, a Fulbright scholar.
By Novenber I had been able to establish some connections with a few members of the Fulbright community in New York and New Jersey. There was also a one-off event at MSU there I met some more Fulbrighters. Jelena, an Associate Professor in Marketing Management back in her home country of Montenegro, a country in Southeastern Europe, was one of them. She was struggling to find the appropriate words in English, but her Southern charm and smile made up for that. Whenever we met on campus and beyond, she would give me a big kiss and a hug, which felt so sweet. It felt incredible to connect with a fellow Slav and to know we had this extra thing in common as Montenergo used to be part of Yugoslavia (which is a combination of the words «south» and «slavs»), which used to be part of the Soviet Union. At this point we must have all gotten accustomed to living in the U.S. and had a lot of thoughts and feelings to share with each other. Jelena and I felt comfortable talking and pouring out hearts to each other. One day we met at her office to have a conversation about her English learning history.
Jelena started learning Russian at elementary school. It was only later on that she started learning English. For her generation (those in their 40s) it was all about theory (grammar) and there was no practice of English in «daily situations» (stores, cinema, etc.), which Jelena sees as an absolutely bad approach. This is why she is so happy having made use of her English actively here in the U.S. for almost 3 months. She has to use English professionally – mainly for writing research articles and attending international conferences. She is aware of how the American variety she has been picking up here (along with some professional slang) might sound a bit strange when she comes back to Europe where she does most of her work.
Back home she mostly practiced speaking with her son who is now in Grade 5. Here in the U.S. she is sharing a house with an American family and meets a lot of new people. «All my life is in English», says Jelena. Sometimes she feels it is «weird» to hear herself speaking English so much. She has even started thinking in English and she feels it solidly entering her brain.
Even though there are still a lot of Russians living on the Montenegrian coast and Russian, which her generation mostly learned back at school, is in demand, younger people prefer English instead. There is also some Italian used as the Italian border is close by as well as some Turkish used by the Muslim minority. As a specialist in Marketing, Jelena points out how in her country there are economic reasons to learn Chinese as there is an ongoing cooperation with China through investment.
English was a «crucial» reason for Jelena to decide to come to the U.S. Besides, one of her students had been on the UGRAD program here at MSU.
There have been some emotional trade-offs for Jelena as she had to leave her son behind for a year in order to come here. She realizes that is the price to pay for this «big» chance to start speaking English fluently.
Jelena feels her personality changes when she speaks English, which she again describes as a «weird» but definitely a positive change.
She believes that in order to survive and thrive in this increasingly competitive world, as she keeps saying to her students back in Montenegro, one has to be flexible rather than simply smart. Even considering herself not gifted for languages, Jelena knows she has no way rather than master English to advance her teaching and research career. As a side note, she questions she has no talent as in fact, apart from her native language, she speaks Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian which are all similar but still are separate languages.
In the future Jelena might consider learning German and probably Spanish. Even though she recognizes the global importance of Chinese, she says it is not for her.
For someone still feeling nervous speaking a foreign language just as she used to before coming to the U.S., Jelena suggests «going with the flow» and always looking for ways to listen to the target language in order to «center your ears» on it. That was how she overcame her «stage freight» particularly when asked questions in work settings.
∞ I can’t even imagine how much identity struggle is involved in learning English and experiencing all the ups and downs, which are inherently part of this journey, for someone who has a solid teaching career back home. Transitioning from a figure of authority to someone taking in new experiences almost as a kid while also being a parent must have been daunting.
As a Russian, I might have had mixed feelings about some kind of reluctance of the countries that used to make up the former Soviet Union to continue learning Russian, but as Jelena pointed out from her professional perspective, there are obviously economic reasons for that. It is still comforting to know that all the four languages she speaks would be somewhat intelligible to me. Actually, in the same year we had our talk (2017) in the attempt to counteract nationalism the Declaration on the Common Language was issued establishing that Bosniaks, Croats, Montenegrins and Serbs have a common standard language.
We were all separated from our families and sometimes it felt so hard to stay on the same page on some matters being thousands of miles away. Being in the U.S., a country that a lot of Russians have strong feelings about – which obviously goes all the way back to the Cold War – didn’t make it easy. Jelena was able to see I was feeling somewhat down on the day of our interview and said, «Your eyes look sad». That was so moving to have her point out something that I chose not to communicate with words. As much as we love our families, we have to make sacrifices to achieve what we want for ourselves even if that might cause us to have major arguments with those we love so much… Sometimes it is not only bilingualism that enables and enhances understanding as eyes can definitely be informative than words we say.
A smart and polite bilingual gentleman
(Naseer, Afghanistan)
Languages spoken: Pashto, Dari, English, Hindi, Arabic.
Field of study/career: Public Health, Montclair State University.
Naseer was the second fellow Fulbrighter from Afghanistan I met at MSU. Probably due to being somewhat older than Sharif that I interviewed previously, he seemed a lot more reserved and didn’t initially talk too much. Yet again, I was excited to get another person’s perspective on English learning in this country and was happy to have Naseer agree to meet for a chat on campus.
Before starting