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Even if you don’t know me personally, a few clicks through my blog (or any knowledge of my policy paper) have probably revealed to you that I have an immense interest in languages and the process of language learning. Consequently, I have a plethora of experiences interacting with people or being the person learning a second language. As a result, I have always been kind of sensitive about the topic. In the past, whenever I have interacted with non-native speakers of English, I try to be conscientious of my word choice. By no means do I try to dumb down the material — because that can just come across as insulting — but I will definitely try and think of more straight-forward ways to phrase things, and check myself if I notice that I’m using a ton of slang or strange expressions. My perspective on this subject has been crucially shaped by my own experiences interacting in a second language, both as an exchange student to Germany in high school, and an intern in France between high school and college. While my experience as an exchange student was relatively positive, my one as an intern was more complicated (that’s not to say that I didn’t have a good time — I did!). My French was still a work in progress (but I’ve come to the realization that language learning always is) and the language gap between myself and my employer was a source of frustration on multiple occasions. I did learn several important life lessons from these interactions; never before had I realized how easy it is for many people to equate the ability to express one’s self to overall intelligence. Logically, I can see how this connection can be made; we foremost express ourselves, our ideas, and our worldview through language, and so when one’s expression is lacking in complexity or clarity, it is easy to leap to the conclusion that this comes from a lack of intelligence. I found myself frustrated on multiple occasions that my employer would question my intelligence or competency — something that I had never struggled to express before — simply because I would fail to understand certain instructions in French on the first try.

I took this lesson to heart, and when I returned back to America, I tried to be diligent about catching myself if I found myself judging international students or other non-native speakers of English based on how well they were able to convey their ideas. My feelings on this topic were further developed this past school year when I had the privilege to work as an ESL tutor as part of an English class on adult literacy. Over the course of the semester, as I met twice weekly with my learning partner — a middle aged Korean woman who had lived in the US for ten years — I gained many insights into the struggles and prejudices someone might face simply because they didn’t know the language. My learning partner shared with me personal stories such as one instance when she went to a Starbucks in Texas and became extremely embarrassed because the barrister couldn’t understand her order and held up the whole line. She expressed anxiety to me about understanding the teacher during parent-teacher conferences, or conveying her symptoms to the doctor when she had a chest cold. She also told me how the principal at one of the elementary schools that her children had attended in America had been clearly prejudiced against the parents of the international students, barely offering them a wave while she enthusiastically greeted the parents of the American students. Having worked with my learning partner extensively, I knew how fastidiously she worked to learn and improve her English, and through our various discussions I also knew that she was far from an unintelligent or untalented person, so it annoyed me to think that she was treated as such just because of the language barrier. As a result of our interactions, I began to be more vocal about calling out peers and friends who discriminated against classmates or professors just because they couldn’t understand what they were saying due to an accent.

Today, I experienced the flipside of this situation. My first (and only class) was the tutorat for my history seminar on the League of Nations. Although technically last week was the first session of it, I had just switched into the class, and evidently most of the others were missing, so we spent the first part of class introducing ourselves and talking about our experiences with previous tutorats. When I introduced myself, I explained that I had never had a tutorat before, because I came from the US and it wasn’t really a thing at my university, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

After this, our TA talked a bit about the presentations that we have to do for class, and then had us brainstorm in groups good and bad practices for presentations. We then went around the class and shared some ideas our groups had proposed. For his second suggestion, a kid in the final group put forth this… shall we say “interesting”… tip:

“I think it’s important to have good grammar when you’re giving your presentation.” (Okay, sure, good, I’m with you so far.)
“Like, it can be a bad presentation if you can’t speak German well.” (Okay…)
“Like if you come from another country and make lots of mistakes in grammar and stuff, that just sucks to listen to.” (K I’m feeling a bit attacked now).
“Like it always sucks if you go to a lecture, and the person giving the presentation is like, from another country, and like, maybe they speak English normally and are now trying to speak German and make more than like two or three mistakes. Like those presentations just suck.”

I will give credit to our TA — he was very diplomatic in his response to the kid. Obviously, though, I was angered, because given the context, it was hard not to feel like this was a personal statement directed towards me. I had never even spoken to this kid and he was already, right out of the gate, insinuating that I would give a lousy presentation just because German wasn’t my first language. Furthermore, as I noted before, I find it extremely narrow-minded when people judge the content of one’s thoughts and abilities solely upon their speaking abilities in a foreign language.

This kid is by no means the only person to have ever behaved this way; as I’ve noted, some of my best friends, and even I myself, am guilty of such discrimination. While I’m still kind of upset, I’m determined not to let this one interaction affect my entire perception of the class. Perhaps in a bit I’ll forgive this kid (or just try and show him up by doing a kickass presentation). Nevertheless, I think this story is a good reminder to us all to be more considerate in how we formulate our impressions and interactions with others, especially on the basis of language.

Also, considering this post, I think it’s kind of humorous, because before we started talking about presentations, the TA opened the class with the question “What is the importance of language when evaluating history?”