To Help Proficient Speakers Think about Preempting and Fixing Strategies
By way of example, consider the following interaction drawn from interviews conducted as part of a study of the engagement in schooling of middle school students who arrived in Australia as refugees from Africa. The interaction was elicited by the question “What do you like doing best [at school]” The young Sudanese student replied, “reading.” As the interviewer, I probed: “What type of reading”
Initially I could not recognize the bookshop name, Summer Text (pseudonym), a name that plays on the locality name. I recognized the first sound in “summer,” but not the rest of the word, and guessed “science texts.” Conscious of the power relationship in a research interview between a first-language—speaking academic and a middle school ELL, I was trying to save face for the student. To this end, I repeated the student’s words and feigned having not heard, ran checks on my own comprehension, and pretended, apologetically (while trying to end the interaction), that the problem was my ignorance of local bookshops. This interaction is no exemplar of best practice. A colleague has pointed out that I might have avoided imposing my guess, “science texts”, by asking “Where is that I don’t know where it is.” However, the data do show strategies alternative to blaming ELLs for being “incomprehensible.”
To help proficient speakers think about preempting and fixing strategies, have them interview a person who speaks English as a second language (e.g., a teacher, a teacher’s aide, older students at the school). Questions should probe what it is that makes it easy or difficult to use and learn a second language, and how proficient speakers of English can be better conversation partners. Interviewers should report back to the class. Similarly, students might interview a proficient speaker of English who works or interacts regularly with learners of the language. Questions might probe the ways they try to be good conversation partners. ELLs might be asked to nominate as interviewees people to whom it is easy to talk.
It is also helpful to model and discuss strategies. This is one of the lessons I have drawn from preparing my Australian undergraduate literacy education students for interactions with international students from Hong Kong, who come to take short English courses in Australia. Use of natural feedback displaying interest or level of understanding, comprehension checks, supportive body language, and sufficient time in the conversation for ELLs to formulate utterances are some of the strategies that can be discussed in advance, modeled or applied in authentic conversations, and revisited later.
One of the most productive discussions my undergraduates had about communicating across differences occurred when a student shared with us her embarrassment at not being able to fix a moment of incomprehension during a discussion with a Hong Kong student. “How do you explain ‘avocado'” she asked me anxiously as I walked around the room during the discussion period. The misunderstanding was resolved when the Hong Kong student pulled a bilingual dictionary from her bag. Follow-up discussion focused on the inevitability of misunderstanding and the necessity of being prepared for it. In contexts of great diversity where it is unrealistic to try to equip students with knowledge of every language and culture they might encounter, these are some of the most important, and realistic, intercultural learnings for students (Thornbury & Slade, 2006).
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