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Viewpoint Interviews

For my final post I wanted to partake in multiple small interviews with a handful of University at Buffalo students who only speak one language and ask them some questions to get a bit of perspective on what people think about the topic and ideas I am writing about. For the survey I decided to ask a quick six questions that can be easily answered. The questions are as follows…

1. Do you think learning a second language would benefit you in the future?

2. Are you interested in learning a new language?

3. What language would you learn given the option?

4. What language do you think would be the most beneficial to learn?

5. Do you think knowing a second language gives you an advantage in finding a job?

6. Say you did decide to learn a second language; how would you go about learning it?

Andrew Aufderheide:

1. Yes

2. Yes

3. German

4. Chinese/ Mandarin

5. With some jobs yes

6. Start using an app on my phone

Spencer Green:

1. Yes

2. Yes

3. Italian, because I’m trying to study abroad there

4. Italian

5. Yes

6. Duolingo an app on my phone

Alan Christie:

1. Sure

2. Yeah

3. Spanish

4. Spanish

5. Yes

6. Take classes at UB

Peter Konrad:

1. Yes

2. No

3. German

4. Mandarin/ Cantonese

5. Yes

6. Online class so I can learn at my own pace

Mike Janak:

1. Yes

2. Yes

3. French or Japanese

4. Mandarin or Spanish

5. Without question

6. Sign up for an in-person class

Cameron Smith:

1. Yes

2. Nope

3. Mandarin

4. Mandarin

5. Yeah

6. Podcasts

After distributing the survey to six people who only speak one language, as I reviewed the results and found some interesting conclusions that were unexpected. For example, when I gave out the survey I expected people to want to learn the language that they thought would benefit them the most the majority of the time. However, this was only the case half the time. This came to me as a shock because personally, I want to learn the language that would benefit me the most and just thought that would be the case for everyone else. I was mistaken by a large margin. Another thing that came as a shock to me was most of my survey takers said that they believed that Mandarin or some form of Chinese language. The close second was the Spanish language but personally I have it ranked at the top. My previous research also suggests that Spanish is the language that would provide the most benefit to new people seeking to learn a new language in America, due to the steadily growing Latino population in the United States. However, I can understand why these students would see the benefit of learning Mandarin due to the large number of Chinese international students here at The University at Buffalo. The last thing I want to touch upon from my survey is the different approaches that these students came up with on how they would go about learning a new language. There are things I would never have thought of doing to try and learn a new language. For example, Cameron Smith (personal communication, October 7, 2018) said he would listen to podcasts. Spencer Green and Andrew Aufderheide (personal communication, October 7, 2018) said they would use an app on their phone. I investigated that one and found the app they described. It was called “Duolingo”, I decided to make myself an account and am now giving it a try to pick up on some Spanish.

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