Aurora Learns French
Wolfgang, Aurora

>>SPEAKER: Ok, now that's perfect and then she will ask you your name and where you're from and then she'll start asking you questions. 

>>SPEAKER #2: Alright will you introduce yourself and tell us where you're from?

>>AURORA: Ok, my name's Aurora Wolfgang and I am now living in San Bernardino California. 

>>SPEAKER #2: Why don't you tell us a little bit about your beginning literacy or your beginning to read? Can you tell us something about that?

>>AURORA: Ok, well what I'm going to do is talk about learning French because I'm a French professor so it's actually kind of my second experience with literacy which I remember because that was a much more conscious process than just learning English. So I started in my last year of high school and I had tried Spanish but didn't really like Spanish so much. I then tried French and I really liked that but I was then very distracted in high school so I didn't do very well. When I got into community college I continued to take classes and for some reason I had this thought of, "I don't want to spend my whole life with Americans." In order to get integrated into another culture I was going to have to learn to speak or function fluently in another culture. I don't remember where that impetus was coming from but I remember having that thought. Actually one of my teachers at the community college who was just an older French woman who was holding conversation classes and we became very good friends and she was probably forty years older than I was. We would meet every week and we would talk and I ended up being very good friends with her for about twenty or twenty-five years. So I think part of that was in making those kinds of relationships with people who are native in the language - that really is the impetus even though I focus much more now on reading and writing. I think in the beginning I focused on speaking and communicating and that's what made me want to learn more and even when I went to France because again with this idea that I want to become fluent. I got a scholarship to go study in France and I went off on my own for a year to Southern France and while I was there I was very uninterested in my grammar classes, very uninterested, and the French are very traditional in their way of teaching and it's really difficult for me to find enthusiasm for that. I did live with a French couple and I met their friends and other people and traveled and met my first French girlfriend and so then kind of the whole world opened up to me and it was through those connections and the ability to communicate and also be involved in the culture itself that really gave me the impetus to continue doing the reading, writing, and analysis part of it which ended up being my profession. 

>>SPEAKER #2: Did that language come easily to you or was there a point where you were frustrated or struggled at all?

>>AURORA: I think when you learn a second language there is always that but I have reasons to learn it. So yeah it's work, learning any language is work but when there are big payoffs it's worth it. This first French girlfriend she was a language teacher and this was way before I had even considered being a language teacher myself and she would analyze all my errors and she wanted me to carry a little notebook around and write down new expressions and stuff. I was like, "No, you understood what I said, let's just move on with this conversation." [Laughing] So again for me it was if I could communicate effectively. 

>>SPEAKER #2: When did you know you had arrived and that you were literate in this language and you held this language?

>>AURORA: Yeah, well Cindy had asked and that first year I was living there probably about six months into it my dreams started incorporating the French and I would dream in French. Of course that changed once I came back to the states. I don't think I've ever felt like I totally have it. I'm always learning new things. There are things in a second language in which you acquire later in life. Even though compared to most people I would be extremely fluent and extremely literate in French - I publish in French - but I still feel like it's a second language. It's a language I do well in but it's not totally mine in the same kind of comfort that it is in English. 

>>SPEAKER #2: Is there anything else you'd like to add? [Inaudible] In the beginning you said it was your speech that you focused on and then became the reading and writing and analyzing. How did that transformation happen?

>>AURORA: That really happened once I went into a Master's program. As an undergrad I was more interested in just kind of learning the culture and I would write papers but I would have my friends correct them, my French friends would help me. [Laughing] I think it was once I really had to start teaching - actually I think that would be my PhD program. I got through my Master's program but I didn't really go back and make sure and figure out how to improve my writing besides just trying to express myself but once I had to teach it, as they say once you're responsible for it, then I really had to pin down all those things that I was not focused on. You know, I think that also influences how I teach because I make culture the center of it especially with my second year classes. They have enough elements of language to use and they do still have to continue to build working on their language skills but I always do it through learning about the culture. So they have to use the language in an authentic and real way.

>>SPEAKER #2: So you bring the culture into the classroom?

>>AURORA: That is part of what we do in class. I choose different aspects of French culture to focus on so one quarter we might work on the Caribbean and then we'll read some stories from Caribbean writers and even children's stories because they're easier or watch films and then do all our discussion about it. Our vocabulary building is based on that and sometimes it's based on French and sometimes we do West Africa and we try to get them familiar with the different places in the world where they speak French. So that for me is the focus rather than, "Did you conjugate that verb correctly?" Although that's important and they do that work on their own but not as part of the class. 

>>SPEAKER #2: Anything else you'd like to add to that?

>>AURORA: Let's see, I guess the only thing is that I don't think you ever arrive at that moment of full mastery, at least I don't feel I will arrive at that moment. There really is always so much more; language is so vast that maybe you can carve out zones of comfort in it. So I've got a lot of good zones to hang out in.

>>SPEAKER #2: Great.