own personal touch even more and to take advantage of that not being a PhD paper, before each story I decided to include the information on how I met each of the participants and how I myself was navigating through associated linguistic, cultural, political issues at the time. In scientific terms I was examining «a larger sociohistoric context of narrative production» (Mann, 2010). After each interview I also provided some reflections on what I heard and some further thoughts that this particular participant inspired in me.
There are different ways to analyze interviews that are commonly used by linguists (e.g., content analysis (Gheyle & Jacobs, 2017)). In the section following the interviews I will be classifying those issues into groups (i.e., language learning and teaching, identity, culture, politics). I am aware of «the temptation to carve out those more quotable parts that serve our purposes» (Pavlenko, 2007). However, as much as I will be trying to stay objective, I agree that as a writer at this stage I am bringing some of my own biases into the project.
I am perfectly aware of the possible limitations of such studies and possible criticisms of some methods of collecting qualitative interview data and analyzing it addressed in scientific literature. For example, as part of this project I have been focusing only on the oral narrative data obtained from the participants. Besides, as my stay in the U.S. was limited, I had no opportunity to conduct longitudinal studies. Another crucial factor is the language of the interviews. All of them were conducted in English. Even though all of the participants are confident English users, it is obvious that they might have faced some difficulties getting their message across and making it more nuanced, which native speakers did not. Finally, as I previously said, I did not attempt to target any specific groups of bilinguals and included individuals with various levels of language competence into the project. I hope that despite all of these obvious limitations, my readers will be able to benefit from the following 51 interviews that are to be read either individually or in the same order they are presented in the book.
Part 1.3. MEET MY BILINGUALS!
First, before you get to know my bilinguals and find out about their linguistic adventures, let’s imagine I asked myself these same questions on my long flight from Paris to Miami on August 21, 2017. This will also be a way for me to introduce myself to those who might not know me while talking about my own language journey that got underway way before I found myself on this plane crossing the Atlantic for the first time in my life.
Me and my life-long commitment to English (Olga, Russia)
Languages spoken: Russian, English, German, some Italian, French, Spanish.
Field of study/career: English teacher, translator, researcher (Linguistics).
I had my first English class at Grade 2 at the age of 8. For months before that «big day», I had been growing more and more excited. As I had learned some of the English alphabet, I thought I would master English when I had learned all the letters and would simply use them instead of the corresponding Russian ones. For example, I remember writing the Russian word for «granddad» (дед in Russian) as «ded» naively thinking that was a proper English word! I had no idea what kind of disappointment I would be in for when my real English classes started!
Back in the 1990s English wasn’t a compulsory foreign language to learn in Russia until Grade 5. At my school in a small town in the country’s southwest, it was possible to start taking it earlier as an optional free class. Even though in the post-Soviet Russia English didn’t enjoy the same level of prestige as it would around a decade or so later, it still seemed a good idea to start at an earlier age.
It didn’t take me too long to start getting disappointed – it wasn’t about specific difficulties I had, but that was because of the teacher who would spend almost the entire class yelling and screaming at us. She loved to write in huge handwriting and once in Grade 3 she gave me a huge «3-” (or a «C-») for a test. I was called «the family’s disgrace» by Mum when she found that notebook that I had been trying so hard to hide somewhere in the apartment. I think this phrase stuck with me for years and was part of my motivation to persevere with English. My sister, who was in Grade 8 back then, was doing exceptionally and unbelievably well academically, particularly in the Russian language. She had been winning all sorts of school competitions and was featured in a local newspaper a few times.
Deep down inside, I wanted to be at least a tiny bit as smart as my sister I saw working with huge dictionaries of Russian. Not wanting to be a complete «copycat», I picked up a visual dictionary of English. Somehow I had a gut feeling it was going to be a truly «big» moment in my life. It wasn’t large so by the end of the summer, I had studied it from cover to cover. I picked up a few more English books – including the legendary (in the former USSR, anyway) English course by Наталья Бонк (Natalia Bonk) and noticed I was getting more and more interested…
In the early 2000s music was the only window into a «foreign» (Western) world. Once I heard some songs by a British pop band on a radio show hosted by a Russian journalist living in London (which seemed to be somewhere on the Moon!). They somehow stroke a chord with me and sparked my interest in English even more. What I really loved was reading and translating their song lyrics my sister’s friend downloaded from the Internet for me (I didn’t even get my first computer till Grade 10). I would keep notes of any new vocabulary I came across.
School classes of English where we did nothing but do boring grammar exercises and translate texts from English into Russian had become nothing but an obligation. I realized that early on I would have to take responsibility for my own learning. So, I ended up with an inconsistent «diet» of whatever textbooks I could get my hands on. I did all the tasks in writing in a thick notebook and used the answer key to check my answers.
Eventually my teacher (the same that would still scream and yell at us) noticed my interest in her subject and I became her favorite. It seemed as if she was occasionally even relying on me for translations! I was hoping I had started to prove I wasn’t «the family’s disgrace». I can’t think of any difficulties I had at that point at all. I loved every minute of my independent learning, which seemed to be the most enjoyable thing unlike all those boring school classes (probably apart from Russian and Literature). Or I might have loved English too much by that point to even start noticing any difficulties.
It wasn’t until I participated in regional school competitions in English that I realized I couldn’t speak like those kids from the region’s capital! I had trained myself quite well in grammar and vocabulary, but it hadn’t ever occurred to me what I had been doing all of that for. I had treated English more as a funny game without thinking it was an actual language you had to speak!
As there were still no opportunities to practise speaking, I continued working with the other aspects. For reading I had some classics and a few Oxford readers. Apart from listening to a few audiobooks on my tape recorder and later a CD-player, I studied a video course on CD-ROM after we had finally got a computer. I didn’t pay much attention to writing. I only wish I had attempted to write in English creatively while still at high school.
Anyway, I knew well before I had finished school that English would be my future career. I was obsessed with it while my classmates were going on first dates and having fun. «English is your boyfriend», I remember one of them saying trying to make fun of that boring «nerd» I was considered to be. «Probably that was true», I thought to myself and stayed focused on my goals. One of the crucial ones was to pass my university exams to be able to study for free. In the early 2000s English was considered a prestigious foreign language as probably everything which had a word