Using the Bilingual Interview Protocol, interview an immigrant adult for whom English is their second language.

Using the Bilingual Interview Protocol, interview an immigrant adult for whom English is their second language. The purpose of this assignment is to explore an individual’s history and experience with second language acquisition, as well as how the individual’s identity, emotions, and memory processes relate to language proficiency and history. You must use the Interview Protocol for this project and attach your completed protocol to your written paper. In addition to asking questions as per the interview protocol, the interviewee will hand-write in English, in your presence (it can be a Zoom session), a paragraph or two on what it means to be bilingual. You will compare the quality of the oral interview (oral language proficiency) and the quality of the written paragraph (i.e., Is the level of writing what you expected, given the proficiency level exhibited during the interview?).

Written Assignment: In an integrated essay about your interviewee, write up your findings, including your observations and thoughts about this task according to the rubric. You should structure your paper with the following headers and applicable prompts:

BACKGROUND: Describe your interviewee in terms of age, ethnicity, languages spoken, immigration history, education history, family history. How do you know this person? Anything else you want to include?

LINGUISTIC HISTORY: Describe your interviewee’s second language learning process. If the individual knows more than two languages, then you need to describe the development of the other languages as well. Describe the person’s progress through second language acquisition. What about normal processes of second language acquisition? Does the person engage in code-switching on a regular basis? What function does the code-switching serve? What about the factors that influence second language acquisition? What about BICS vs. CALP? Analyze the paragraph (“What It Means to Be Bilingual”). Was the paragraph written well? Was there a discrepancy between oral language proficiency in English and written ability in English? Consider anything else we discussed in class. Attach paragraph to paper.

IDENTITY: How does the interviewee identify ethnically/racially/culturally? Use Tse’s model and describe the person’s progress through each stage. What is the relationship between the way the person identifies and their proficiency in the languages known? If a parent, how does second language acquisition influence their parenting style? Consider the individual’s sense of self – a bilingual integrated self? A dual self? What languages does the person dream in? If they were to write in a diary, in which language would it be? Consider the psycholinguistic history questions. Does the person behave and think differently in each language?

EMOTIONS, MEMORY, THINKING, & LANGUAGE: With respect to your interviewee, how do emotions interact with language? When angry? When arguing? When cursing? When uttering deepest feelings? When anxious? In inner speech? When saying “I love you”? When trying to recall difficult memories? When succumbing to road rage, in what language is it? Did the individual experience negative emotions when learning the second language (e.g., anxiety)? Are your interviewee’s memories language-specific? Ask the person to recall a dream. How did language factor in? When discussing a difficult event with a bilingual friend, does it make a difference in which language you describe it? Are certain things remembered better in a particular language? What language does the person think in? At the end of a long day, when tired, does the person still think in the same language?
CRITICAL SELF-REFLECTION: How do your experiences relate to your interviewee’s? How did the interview process go? Would you have done anything differently? Were you surprised by anything? What feelings and thoughts were triggered for you by this assignment?