by Sara Carter
This week I continued to run participants, which for me has been the most enjoyable part of doing research because I have had a series of really interesting conversations with some of my participants regarding their experience as native English speakers living outside of their L1 environment. After completing my experimental tasks, almost every participant I have run has expressed interest in hearing about where I am from, and inquired as to my impressions of the city of Granada and what living in Spain has been like for me. This has prompted several conversations regarding the experience of living in the Spanish immersion environment (in the case of this group, all are L1 English speakers immersed in Spanish) and often results in them sharing their perception of how their English speech has been impacted by the predominant use of Spanish. I have been told, for example, by several people that when they speak to family members in English or when they first started speaking with me, they often experience some difficulty in retrieving the English words to express what they are trying to say, as it is the Spanish word that first leaps to mind. Also, because a significant part of our initial recruitment efforts began with contacting language schools to try to locate English teachers there who are native speakers, many of the participants who are English instructors have described what it has been like to be teaching their native language abroad. Interestingly, many of my participants who are in their early to mid twenties have indicated that education and English had nothing to do with what they studied in college but that they had wanted to live abroad and teaching English was how they were able to do so. Apparently there is a program run by the regional government of Andalucia to which one can apply to be an English teacher in Granada that a number of my participants have told me about, which might be something to look into for the future. It was especially interesting for me to talk with them about the experience of teaching English to native Spanish speakers in the Spanish immersion environment because when I was in high school I had an internship teaching English to native speakers of Spanish who themselves were living abroad. I wasn’t actually anticipating learning from my participants themselves while I was here, as I assumed that being native English speakers I wouldn’t get much in the way of “exchange” with them, so this has been a positive addition to conducting research. THE MOST EXCITING, however, was the first participant that expressed a genuine interest in hearing about what it was that my project was actually seeking to investigate and continued to ask me questions to ensure that he understood what I was talking about! I certainly had not expected to be discussing verb bias with a 20-something year old who was participating in a paid study. Excellent. It was also helpful to get used to speaking about my project and to get some additional practice in explaining exactly how my tasks function in investigating the questions that form the foundation of my project. Perhaps I will be more prepared for the fearfully anticipated presentation that we will be giving at our lab meeting quite soon!
Much as I have enjoyed running the participants that we have been able to schedule, the process of recruiting continues to be a bit more of a challenge than we had anticipated, which is certainly anxiety-provoking at times because I truly hope to maximize the data that I am able to collect for my experiment during my brief stay here. Many of the language schools that we visited to try to find native English speakers explained to us that this is a particularly busy time for their teachers right now as they are finishing up with their spring classes and are consequently occupied with preparations for exams. In my additional attempts to contact individuals to recruit them to participate, I have been met with a similar response as they have indicated that they simply do not have any room in their schedule at this time. Because the population that we are seeking has necessitated that we look off campus, I have found that it has also been a problem for people to make it up to our lab, which is outside of the immediate center of the city (as well as at the top of a mountain!), given that they are not students who already have to be up here anyway. It seems that so far the most successful method we have found for recruiting has been to simply ask the people that come to complete our experiment if they have any friends or know of any other native English speakers who meet our requirements. Unfortunately, looking for people in this manner does mean that rather than recruiting a certain group of people who would qualify to participate and thus finding several subjects all at once, we will be seeking people on more of an individual basis, which will make corresponding with potential participants an especially significant part of collecting data here. Although it is definitely discouraging to spend a great deal of time contacting people and to hear back from very few (if any) of them, Alvaro has been especially encouraging throughout this process, assuring me that difficulties in finding participants is sometimes part of research. It has been great to have him here to work with me and to be able to ask him questions in areas of research that I am less familiar with.
I like to think that I am making progress in speaking Spanish, in that the act of doing so has begun to seem less intimidating to me and I am more readily involving myself in conversation, hesitating less when spoken to. Truth be told, however, the momentary anxiety that arises as I try to simultaneously select my words with care and verbalize them has not entirely disappeared. I have begun to try to accept the fact that I will inevitably make mistakes in speaking (even Giuli does it sometimes!), but at the same time I will ultimately be able to communicate what it is that I am trying to convey, even if it entails a bit of additional effort to change how I am saying something. I also try to keep in mind that I will never see the majority of the people with whom I interact here after I leave, which does provide a bit of additional comfort. Making these adjustments to the way in which I approach the act of speaking has gone a long way in easing my reluctance to speak, which I think will be critical to improving my Spanish as just putting the language into practice is so important. I am still a bit nervous when I talk with members of the lab group because I know that I will be seeing them quite a bit during my time here and because I am truthfully a bit intimidated by their knowledge of research that far exceeds my own. When we speak with them in Spanish they correct the errors that we make in a way that is genuinely intended to help us improve and is free of judgment, which I have really appreciated because it has made me aware of areas in which I can improve and helped me to keep them in mind. It also helps to know that the vast majority of the people from the lab speak at least two languages so they understand the experience of putting one’s second language into use and the discomfort it can entail. Being within the context of the group and having them be so supportive in terms of encouraging all of us to speak in Spanish makes me really glad to be working here with Teresa Bajo and her group and having the opportunity to spend time with and learn from them all.