Interview Transcript

Written Transcript of Interview With ELL

Date: Wednesday July 6, 2011
Time: 3:30 pm – 3:45 pm

A. Interviewer: Hannah Still
B. Interviewee: Luis (authorized use of first name only)

A.  If you could just give a description on who you are and how you came to the United States.

B.  Ok I’m a college student right now and I came to the United States about eight years ago.  Umm my first language was Spanish because my parents raised me in Mexico and since in our house we always speak Spanish because of my parents they do not speak much English, so the only ones that actually speak English is just my sisters and I umm.

A. So umm how good…how well do your sisters speak English?

B.  Umm I have an older sister and she have the same level of English as me.  I have a younger sister who she speaks more better than us, in her accent and her writing.  And I have a younger sister who she knows most of it because she gets…she has been hear since lower level schooling, so she has learned every single…I will say just about more English than any of us.

A.   Ok so how about your parents?  Do they speak Spanish and English or any other languages?

B.  Umm no my parents only speak Spanish, a little bit of English, and they speak uh dialect, a Spanish dialect.

A. Which dialect?

B. Um it’s called nanu and it’s only for the state of Hildalgo, which I am from.  My grandparents also speak that and they the ones learning English, so my parents were raised speaking nanu, so they were the one who had to learn Spanish and uh we were learning English.

A. Ok umm so when you came here and you learned English, what was that like?

B.  Uh it was difficult.  It was very difficult because it uh the grammar for Spanish is almost the opposite as English because there is a few I think umm verbs that they flip and adverbs that wanted to go before the pronoun, but it was hard because we had there are some English words in which the sound is completely different than how its written and since in Spanish its almost like all sounds and sounds sounds is the way you writ it, we were, we got used to it and it’s not the same as English.
A.  Ok umm so when you were learning English or when you were going to school here, did you have any problems?  Were the other kids nice to you?

B.  Umm I would say no because the fact that we didn’t know English it was like a open give um uh more authority over us because we…if they did something to us we were not able to tell the teacher or tell anybody that they…we were being bothered, so they always pick, well at least in my case, they always pick on me.  I don’t know about my sisters though.

A.  Ok um can you remember anything about um how your teacher taught you English?  Did she do anything special?  Were you in ESOL classes?

B. Yes. Umm well she did, she gave us vocabulary words along side with pictures and she also repeated the words throughout the whole entire day.  She also made us like learning, I guess speaking exercises where we have to speak to her and she will tell us how we are doing, how we should say a certain word, or show us images and we would have to repeat the word and we would also have to do writing exercises where we would have to…she would say a word and we have to write it and so on and so on and we after we write out a certain lines of a book we would have to write those lines and she will tell us what every singles word will mean, but grammar such as conjugating verbs, not exactly, it was just vocabulary for us to develop.

A.  Uh was there any…when you were learning English and now when you are still learning some um, how, what words are really difficult are there certain sounds that you still have trouble with?

B.  Yes.  There are some sounds, like I cannot pronounce the word th.  The, dat sound that it make.

A.  The thh sound?

B.  Yes the th sound because we don’t have that th sound in Spansh, so we would totally…

A.  So wait it sounds…what letter does it sound more like?  A D? Daa? Daat? Daa?

B.  Yes.  Yeah.  Like if we were to say the number thirteen it has a close to the letter d sound in the beginning.

A.  Have you joined any clubs or found any hobbies that you really like to do here?

B.  Um yes I have been part of MASA, the Mexican Americans Association, and I joined because they also gone through the same thing as I have because most of um are from Mexico, born from Mexico, and they went through almost the same process as I did and because of that I’ve been able to connect really really with them and we also know the disadvantages of how we were having it they also help other mostly adults on how they should do that, how they should treat others and how they must learn their English.

A. Have you heard any stories that um affected you or have you been able to help anyone who went through something similar to what you went through?

B. Yes um I was actually a volunteer for during my high school years for other middle schoolers that they were going umm…that they were part of the ESOL program, so I went back to my old middle school and helped them out on the same situations which I had problems in which were science, math, and social studies.  I would, the teacher that led me permission to come back, come back, come and work for them for an hour at they the teachers of math and science courses were also letting me go into their last period classes, be with them, and as the teacher give his lecture I was also allowed to just bring all the ESOL students who were in that particular class and tell them what he was saying or give my own lecture in Spanish and for them to do their work.

A.  So you mentioned that science and social studies and math were difficult, but what about reading and English?  Was that a difficult subject for you?  Is that a difficult subject for you?

B.  Yes, reading and not much, writing, in the fact that grammar is one big hit for me because my thoughts I can write them out, but there are some words that do not directly translate with the English.

A.  So what’s going on in your mind when you’re seeing a word and you are trying to read it or you are trying to think of a word to write?

B.  Oh when I write, iz somewhat like I see them, I write them in Spanish…I see my thoughts in Spanish, but once I start writing them I translate them into English, using the English grammar, such as, but there are some words in which are difficult to translate, so I’ll put um close to what I think it should be done, but most of the times iz wrong and those are the only parts that really hit me.

A. Do you like to read or do you avoid reading?  What do you like to read?

B.  Oh I read books. Mostly for school I have to read novels which in both analyzing the literal meaning of the passage, but for just hobbies of reading I would read only fiction or mostly fiction because you don’t really have to analyze the text.  You can just read for the fun of it.

A. So at home is there any uh…outside of school do you have any responsibilities or anything that you like to do? What’s a typical day for you?

B. Oh for me a typical day is um coming to classes.  Once I get out of classes I will find friends after school, find friends, and I will hang with them.  Mostly they speakin Spanish…Spanish speakers, so I will talk to them in Spanish, and that way I do not lose my Spanish either and then I will go back home and then sometimes I will go pick up my mom from work or when uh she comes to work we will…she will prepare dinner, well my sisters and I finish our homework and we got there set up the table and then once we finish we pick up our stuff.  We usually watch novellas in Spanish and then we will either…other wise we will do our homework if we have any left over.  We will take showers and then go to sleep, and then next day will be there.

A.  Are there any things you are expected to do at home, when you go home, on top of going to school?

B.  Um yes, clean around the house, do laundry, um sometimes I will have to pick up my sister from school.

A. What kind of chores would you do for cleaning or working at home?

B.  Brooming, keeping the computer desk organized, washing the dishes, picking up the table, laundry also…on the weekends.

A.  Can you describe how you think other people view you as being a person who was not born in America and came to America?  Do you think people treat you differently?

B.  I will say that in at the beginning, as I came here, yeah they treated me differently.  They completely isolated me so I wasn’t able to learn as much English as I would expected to, but once I began learning Spanish and started to communicate umm people were considerate, in the fact that I didn’t know English, so they would kinda talk to me somewhat slow because I was not able to understand or hold conversations for a very long time, so because of that I found people who helped me out in speaking English and the such and that helped me like be confident about my speaking and as the years went through I was able to hold a conversation, talk to more people.  And now that I know English I think they don’t see me as a Spanish speaker, they see me as a bilingual, knowing both Spanish and English, and they sorta they don’t treat me as bad as they did when I first came.

A. So you think they treated you badly in the beginning because of the language?

B.  Because I was not able to communicate with them and I was…I could not say what I thought of um or I could not protect myself basically from their language.

A.  With the new governor Rick Scott and how he wants to bring laws from Arizona to Florida and there’s been talk about deportation and immigration, how do you feel about that?  Do you think that that affects you personally or it affects anyone you know?

B.  Umm yes.  It affects me personally because most of my family is here illigal…without documents and if that were to happen most of my cousins here, are born here, and that mean that…that will mean that their parents will have to go home and they will have to stay here and by themselves, but or the other case is that they will have to go back to Mexico, which is a country that they do not even know of, and that will be harsh for them, but if it’s really…it will be a big impact because basically they have been living here their whole entire lives and for them to just be returned back to their countries because of not having documents but because they seem to be of a specific race and that is more like profiling than just looking at people who have no documents.

A. Is there anything that you feel like would be more helpful to you or would make life less stressful everyday in regards to like learning English or speaking or understanding?

B. Umm yeess when my first years of learning there was a time where I would like to have had a time so that I could ask somebody of my problems that I was having with certain classes, if I was doing the stuff right, or if I didn’t understand a word then I could ask someone in there. Something like that…

A.  Well thank you for your interview Luis.  It was good talking to you.

B.  You’re welcome.