Week 2: Getting Started

This week, I was able to finalize the survey that I will be using to gather information from people who have learned English as a second language. The survey begins with questions about factors that contribute to language acquisition like: mother tongues, age, environment. This is mainly to gauge how much experience the surveyee has with learning English. The next part of the survey asks about difficulties while learning English (i.e punctuation, verb tense). In the beginning, I put a big text box for people to answer, then I realized it would be easier for the surveyees as well as myself if there was a list of options to choose from. On my end, it would be easier to analyse and decide what specifics I should research. However, surveyees can also type in what the want if they feel strongly about another topic that may not be presented in the list of options. To decide what options to include in the question, I looked over some elementary school English curricula for topics that are covered and should be mastered. This ended up being most helpful for grammar topics, since grammar is so broad and has many parts. I also included for most of them parentheses with some examples to clarify. Lastly, the survey includes a section with name and contact information if the surveyee is open to speaking with me more in depth in an interview.

From this survey, I expect to find a few major languages to focus on. While I am expecting Mandarin and Hindi to be two of the more popular ones, I might be surprised by a third or fourth language that is popular. One concern I have about the survey is that people might not find it worth their time to complete it, despite my trying to make it as easy and simple as possible. However, even a few submissions will be able to help me understand where I need to look, and I will definitely be interviewing ESL students from colleges and educational centers I will visit later on.

I have also been searching for books to read. I found What Language Is by John McWhorter after looking through a forum post from a linguistics professor. Although very intriguing, after the first section of the book I decided it isn't really helpful for my senior project. The book discusses not about English or language acquisition, but discusses the complexity of a variety of languages, most of which I have never heard of, and how bizarre they can be. However, another book, Crazy English, was mentioned in the first chapter and it's about why the English language makes no sense. Additionally, John McWhorter is more well-known for writing Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, which is about how the English language came to be the way it is. I have to do more research on this one, though, because some reviews say it may hard to understand if you're not a linguist.

Next week, I will hopefully have gotten my survey out and submissions in, so I will be able to talk more about my findings as well as those from my readings. I will also be contacting professors from the Stanford Language Center and San Jose State University International Gateway. Both of these programs offer English as a Second Language courses to international students, so I hope to audit some of their classes and talk to professors and students. Hopefully I'll be embarking on college campus journeys soon!