read time: approximately 11 minutes

This week!

• Mon, 22 Sept attended the Language Day conference put on by the Fremmedspråksenteret, where I work
• Tues, 23 Sept facilitated two systems of oppression workshops for 10th graders at Kruseløkka Ungdommskole in Sarpsborg
• Thur, 25 Sept learned numbers in my Norwegian class!
• Fri, 26 Sept traveled to Oslo for our Autumn Rover Check-in
• Sat, 27 Sept went on a great hike, meal, cabin visit, and fika  with my university person, her husband, and a former Fulbrighter in town to do a special research project

There’s 1 American in the Room. Switch to English?

At the end of the Language Day Conference at the Language Center where I work, one of the (Norwegian) presenters and I were chatting about how the day had gone. Many of the breakout presentations were in Norwegian and all the speakers in the opening session spoke Norwegian. She was upset that the Language Center, where she used to work, didn’t do more to provide translation services or even ask the speakers to speak in English. I wasn’t as bothered as she was, because we are in Norway, but she kept saying that it was so easy to just make an adjustment. But also, I pulled up google translate on my computer and was able to get the gist—I think—of what the presenters were saying. So I used my own resources to understand.

I didn’t think about it at the time we were chatting, but there were only 6 of us (of almost 150 people) who didn’t speak fluent Norwegian. Actually now that I think about it, in a breakout session I was in a small group with a woman who spoke Norwegian (and Spanish), but not English. It made me think about when you’re going to dinner with friends and there’s a couple friends—or even one friend—who are vegan or vegetarian and you have to make a decision about food based on them. But this isn’t like that, I don’t think, where just 1 English speaker means that everyone has to switch to English. Because also, turns out that the common language for most of the conference attendees was Norwegian.

In my conversation with the woman at the end of the conference, she said this feels exclusive. But for me, it feels arrogant to assume that just because I’m in the room everyone needs to switch to Norwegian. We live in Norway. Yes, everyone speaks English, but I’ve noticed that English is not the language they default to. And that’s okay. At least, it’s okay for me, but I also have feelings about English as a colonizer’s language and how oftentimes as Americans we just assume that everyone should default to the ways we do things. 

While all Norwegian students are taught English in school, people have varying levels of comfort with it, and I understand what it means to use different languages in different settings because you feel more comfortable with certain languages in certain settings. I myself don’t share about my research or teaching with my parents or brother in Thai even though we all speak it because I don’t know those words in Thai. Yes, this is sad to me, and I wish my school teachers understood about translanguaging, where I could develop my home language and the language of school in equal fluency, but also, English is the language of my research and teaching. When doing work on teaching and/or research, I think in English. When considering food, I often think in Thai or sometimes even French. Sometimes English. Hearing Thai will always bring me home—it’s done so even in Norway. I have different languages I feel more comfortable in for different topics and settings. 

All this to say, I was and totally am okay with the default language being Norwegian. I don’t need people to change into English when they are speaking to a group of Norwegian people just because I am there. Every day I sit at lunch with the others in my office and they mostly speak Norwegian to each other. I’m happy to sit and listen; I don’t need to be included in every conversation. I can sense that there are some colleagues who aren’t comfortable with English, so why make them switch when they are also talking about things that don’t actually concern me—they usually talk about work at lunch, it sounds like. And for them, the language of work is Norwegian. Sometimes, like the day after the election, they switched to English because they wanted to include me and share with me their feelings about the election results and also ask about how elections work in the US.

In my thinking about which languages where, I’ve noticed that this isn’t the attitude I have back in the States. When I am in the States, I don’t think that everyone needs to speak English either. I am happy to try to communicate with people who have low fluency or comfort in English in the little I know of their language or, if I don’t know their language at all, to use gestures and visuals. I’ve been thinking about why I don’t expect them to switch into English even though English is a widely spoken language in the States. Part of me thinks it’s my ideas about English as a colonizer’s language and the arrogance we assume that everyone should just speak English in the US. But also, the United States doesn’t have a national language. It has never had a national language. And this is one thing I really love about the US. 

Throughout our history, we have been a nation in tension with those who have come from other countries—whether by force or by choice—and in tension with Indigenous peoples who were already here. Part of the tension is developing a national identity and culture and grounding that unity, in part, in language. But making English the language that will join us as a people defaults to the language of the settler colonizers who landed on the shores of what would become the United States over 400 years ago. 

I am in full support of people keeping their languages because language is not simply a tool for communication, it is one way that we communicate who we are, whose we are, where we are from. It’s one way we communicate our identity and culture. Language is also a means to power. Certain kinds of language grant access. My students know that I don’t agree with this—we shouldn’t restrict access because of language. Language is also a way to control a population. It’s a way to eliminate the culture of populations. Language homogeneity flattens difference. Something is lost when we are all forced to speak the same language. Maybe let me be more specific: something is lost when we are all forced to speak English. 

Now I understand some people might be like, but how can we all understand each other if we’re all speaking different languages? It’s okay for me to 1) not always have to be understood or understand, but also 2) do some work in understanding other people, whether by learning their language or putting in a little more effort in communication. I also think that if we want everyone in the US to speak English, we should be more supportive in teaching them English, like offering free classes. Libraries and churches do a great job with this, especially when these same spaces help English learners understand their rights. But it’s not something that’s federally supported. Teaching English Language Learners who are school children isn’t even federally supported. 

I think ultimately I feel some sort of way about English, because it has been used historically as a means of power and control and to stamp out people’s cultures. I don’t need it to be the dominant or primary language anywhere I am or go. The Norwegian students want to develop fluency in English, and that’s great, I’ll support them in those goals, and I don’t spend enough time with them to think critically with them about the many languages they know. But from my brief conversations with them, many Norwegian kids whose families speak languages other than Norwegian at home value their home languages and want to develop them because they are connections to their identities and their cultures. I don’t want them—or anyone—to lose that connection to themselves because of the clout English carries. So I’m happy to do some work of my own by learning Norwegian, or not stressing out when people are speaking Norwegian in my presence, or not feeling like I have to be included all the time. Living here is a good reminder of what it feels like to be an outsider because of my language. Yet I have a lot of cultural and social capital here, especially in schools, because I am from the United States. I don’t always feel comfortable with that, so I guess my feelings about language make sense. It’s something I’ve been thinking about and will continue to think about! 

Teaching English Language Learners

So I know I just said that I don’t need everyone speaking English around me, but part of my job in Norway is actually to help students develop their fluency in English. Tension! Their teachers, who aren’t generally American speakers of English, invite me into their classrooms because I speak American English. So I can offer them language instruction in American English and I can share with them about American life and culture. 

For fun, I also share with them that I am learning Norwegian, and I practice different phrases with them and ask them to help me develop my language and especially pronunciation skills. They are utterly delighted when they get to teach me Norwegian. Sometimes they laugh at me, and I tell them not to—that I don’t laugh at them as they learn English. That it’s not nice to laugh at others when they are taking big risks in learning and communicating in other languages. It’s fun to be a teacher and a learner, and I hope showing vulnerability with them at the beginning of all my lessons helps them show vulnerability with me too. I think it has. And I think it’s showing them that Norwegian has some clout too—even the American wants to learn Norwegian.

One thing I was reminded of at the Language Conference this week were some strategies for teaching English Language Learners. Because my primary area of certification for teaching is French, in teacher prep school I was taught how to teach a new language to secondary students. But it has been so long since I taught French and since I taught English Language Learners in English class that I have been neglecting all those strategies! It was good to be reminded, especially so early in the year, and at our Rover check in on Friday in Oslo, I mentioned that having an orientation segment where we review strategies for teaching English Language Learners would be a great idea. 

At the Language Conference, I went to a session facilitated by a former Fulbrighter where she taught us the same lesson, but in two different ways: one that didn’t at all attend to our language acquisition needs and one that did. And I totally learned some Spanish! It reminded me that I need to resurrect these strategies that I was taught and used so long ago so that the students I’m working with now can better understand and learn English.

I tried these strategies with the two 10th grade classes I was with this week and they were a hit. We did more definitional work. We did more put these sentences into words you better understand work. We did more gesture and visuals work. We did more how might you say this word in Norwegian work. I did more writing on the board to help us keep track of notes and to record new words. Based on students’ exit tickets, they learned a lot more than the students who I did this same workshop for a couple weeks back. I didn’t get as far in the lesson, but, as a former Fulbrighter reminded me, we didn’t get as far, but we got a lot deeper, which also has immense value. I’m looking forward to continue to use and build strategies for working with English Language Learners. 

Being reminded of ways that I can teach English Language Learners also got me really excited to incorporate and teach these strategies in a class I teach on language at CSU! Woot!