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CHAPTER 4 INDIVIDUAL CASES
The case study, which took a year to complete, consists of descriptions of the experiences of three junior high school students in 9th grade: Yvonne, Cherie, and Fynn.
These three students have different English learning backgrounds and are of varied English proficiency levels.
In order to better understand the three students’ English learning attitudes and their beliefs about their roles in learning, it is important to discuss their previous learning experiences. Their family backgrounds, their learning styles, their learning in the elementary schools and junior high school, and the extent of using English among their friends have all shaped their perceptions and attitudes.
Therefore, this chapter focuses on the discussion of the students’ family
backgrounds, school performance, and attitudes toward learning, respectively, based on an analysis of the interviews, the learning journals of the three cases and observation by the researcher.
The Case Profile Yvonne
Yvonne was a student who always showed talents in languages, either Chinese or English. She was confident in these two subjects at school. However, her grades in her
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two strongest subjects and other weaker ones dropped unexpectedly in her second year of junior high school. In her senior year, her grades were back to her level and she seemed to pay more attention in every class. Yvonne even expressed her desire to master English and hopefully become an English teacher one day. It is interesting to explore Yvonne’s learning experiences and find out what affected her school
performance and why she showed such interest in English.
(A) Yvonne’s Family Background
Yvonne came from a middle-class family. Her father was a taxi driver while her mother worked for an international trade association. She had two siblings－one older brother and one younger brother. Both of her parents took the three children’s English learning very seriously, especially Yvonne’s, since she performed better in learning languages than any other subjects at school.
Yvonne’s father did not have a college degree like her mother. He only graduated from senior high school, but he took pride in his English performance at school.
Therefore, he thought it was important that his three children learn English well. He paid attention to Yvonne’s learning particularly, because he thought his daughter showed more potential in the respect of learning languages. When Yvonne was in the elementary school, her father helped her with her school English assignments almost every day. He stopped helping her when Yvonne went to junior high school and grew confidence in handling her homework and tests by herself.
Even though her father influenced her to a certain extent, it was her mother that
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made a great impact on her attitudes toward learning English. Yvonne’s mother studied International Trade at the National Taipei Junior College of Business (now called National Taipei College of Business), a famous five-year college in Taipei, Taiwan. A large part of her work involved contacting and consulting with foreign clients. It was her belief that English was an essential tool in life and work. She encouraged her children, especially Yvonne, to major in Applied English or International Trade like her when they went to vocational high school or college. When talking about what she wished for her daughter’s future, Yvonne’s mother said, “I believe English is a good choice for a girl.” Her belief affects Yvonne a lot, which is the main reason why Yvonne always intended to major in English at a vocational high school or the same five-year college as her mother, rather than going to a senior high school.
When Yvonne was in the elementary school, her mother bought a set of
self-learning materials for her. Yvonne said the most interesting part was the karaoke program on the computer－she could listen to an English song first, then sing into a microphone, and the computer screen would show a score based on her singing and pronunciations. The first song she learned on her own instead of from the school teachers was ‘The Ten Little Indians.’ She said she liked the challenge of the tongue twister-like rhythms because she had to sing it really fast. She could sing the song over and over again with enthusiasm until she managed to sound the lyrics out smoothly.
Nevertheless, besides using the computer software as a self-learning tool, she spent little time learning English on her own unless her mother offered her opportunities.
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Due to her mother’s work, Yvonne had access to people from other countries. Her most memorable experience happened when she was 8 years old. She wrote to an American boy, Justin, and helped fulfilling his dream to travel around the world through his teddy bear. The boy was too young to take a trip on his own so he sent out his teddy bear to travel for him. Yvonne’s mother knew Justin’s parents through business, and Yvonne’s hometown, Wanli, Taiwan, naturally became the first stop of the teddy bear’s adventure. Yvonne still remembered vividly that one day her mother brought home a teddy bear and a picture of a boy around two years older than Yvonne and told her about the boy’s dream. She then asked if Yvonne would like to help him. Nodding excitedly, Yvonne set out to write a letter to the boy. She wrote it with the limited English words she knew and, mostly in Chinese, telling the boy her intentions of making friends with him and describing her hometown Wanli. Then her mother helped her translate the letter into English, and Yvonne copied the writing on a new piece of pink paper. With her mother’s help, she put the letter along with some pictures of Wanli’s natural scenery and a picture of herself into the stuffed animal’s backpack before they sent the teddy bear to the next stop of its adventure. Yvonne said that she did not know where the bear was sent to because her mother took care of the rest. However, she did receive a few words of gratitude from the boy through her mother after the boy’s teddy bear finished its journey and returned safely to its owner.
When asked about how she felt about this experience, Yvonne said, “to me, it had nothing to do with using Chinese or English. I just thought it was fun to meet a new
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foreign friend and help the friend fulfill his dream at the time.” In the fourth interview with Yvonne, she said,
I looked at the picture and I was like ‘wow, the boy is so cute!’ And I wanted to make friends with him. So I wrote a letter to him happily, imagining that someday I could marry him. It is until much later that I realize how lucky I was to have this special and fun experience to learn English. (4th interview, 2009)
Years later, the boy’s parents took him to Taiwan. He and Yvonne got a chance to meet in person. Again, Yvonne did not see it as an opportunity to practice her English, and neither did she felt intimidated by the idea of speaking English. Which language she used was not her concern, she said, as long as she was talking with her friends. Of course, she knew she could always turn to her mother if she had trouble making the boy understand her. At that moment, however, language was still not important,
communication was.
Chances of speaking with foreigners were not rare for Yvonne. Nonetheless, completely spontaneous conversations did not really occur according to Yvonne’s wish.
Mostly her mother would take part in the talking and teach her how to say certain things beforehand, so sometimes Yvonne was simply repeating after her mother. This way of holding a conversation with foreigners did not bother Yvonne, because once more, for her, her mother was just instructing her about proper etiquette when talking to English speakers. Therefore, for Yvonne, this was the matter of behaving properly in front of guests rather than the matter of speaking English.
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Unfortunately, the support from her parents was interrupted when the marriage of Yvonne’s parents hit the bottom rock in her second year of junior high school. Her parents often got into arguments so fiercely that Yvonne could not concentrate on her schoolwork. What’s worse, Yvonne found herself stuck in the middle constantly. She often had to choose side or acted as a peace-maker between her parents. Oftentimes, she inclined to her mother’s side. The mother and daughter comforted each other.
At that moment I felt all alone. No one understood me what I was going through. But I could not tell my mother, because she had enough on her plates. I did not want to burden her with my worry. I tried to be strong for my mother, but sometimes it’s hard. My mom told me to concentrate on my study and not to worry too much, but… (Yvonne shrugged.) (2nd interview, 2009)
Consequently, her academic performance at that period of time dropped dramatically. Even English, the subject she was most confident in, suffered greatly.
Yvonne said she knew she should worry about her poor performance at school, but she just could not think past the drama at home.
In her senior year, turmoil at home finally settled. While her grades in English and Chinese bounced back fairly quickly, she had to work extra hard on other subjects.
However, in a way, this family incident made her look up to her mother even more. Her mother’s sense of value became her own. It consequently strengthened her
determination to the study of English. She paid more attention in the English class. This could be seen through a statement made by her teacher:
Even though she’s always a good student in class, she seems to take
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her English learning more seriously now. You can see it in her eyes that she’s devoted herself to the class. (The teacher’s journal, September, 2009)
(B) Yvonne’s learning experience at schools
Yvonne never went to any language school or cram school, but she started to learn English at a very young age. She began learning 26 letters, alphabets and phonics, when she was in the affiliated kindergarten of an elementary school. There in the kindergarten, she remembered learning to recognize an alphabet and to pronounce a new sound every week. Thus, before going to elementary school, she had been pretty familiar with the basic rules of pronunciations and the 26 letters.
After kindergarten, Yvonne went to the same elementary school, which provided English courses two years earlier than other elementary schools. There, she met a hard-working English teacher at the first grade. The teacher had lots of creative and fun ways to teach English. Students were always doing lots of English activities on the school’s playground or in the English classroom, rather than in their regular homeroom classroom. Even a children’s game, such as hopscotch, could be turned into a learning activity. The elementary school was not a big school, only twenty-four or twenty-five students in each class, which was a lot fewer than those in most of the classes in other schools in Taiwan. Yvonne said that the students had much more time to practice their English in groups and individually. Yvonne remembered that she and her classmates got to sing one new song every week. Also, no textbooks were used in this teacher’s class.
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All of the materials were designed by the teacher. However, the English teacher could not take all the credits for all the things Yvonne learned at that time. Her homeroom teacher, Ms. Wang, at the fifth and sixth grade was the one that changed Yvonne’s perspective about learning a language, according to Yvonne. She said that Ms. Wang was not an English teacher but she valued English learning so much that she spent a lot of time cooperating with Yvonne’s English teacher just to make the students’ English better.
My homeroom teacher was an interesting person. She did not teach English, but she spent a lot of times thinking about how to improve our English. She often stayed at her office after school and discussed with our English teacher about the activities we could do the next day. Sometimes the activities we had were from her ideas. (1st interview, 2009)
The most memorable activity for Yvonne was that her homeroom teacher and her English teacher took the whole class onto a ship at the Keelung Harbor and asked the students to go talk to foreigners. She and her classmates had to work in groups and took a picture with the foreigners after their little chat. Of course, the English teacher was there to help whenever any group encountered difficulties. Yvonne said she and her teammates had a great time even though their English was still poor at the time.
Yvonne loved to stay after class to discuss homework with her friends at her elementary school. She said this way they could finished all the assignment more efficiently. Besides, whenever they had a question, they could go to their teachers who would still be at their offices long after school hours. However, her focus was not solely
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on English, but all of the school subjects. Yvonne said at that time she did not put extra effort on her English comparing with the effort she put on other school subjects. Also, she did not spend too much time worrying about her self-learning in English.
Upon entering junior high school, Yvonne showed great confidence in the subject English even though sometimes she may not seem to give her best effort. As her English teacher, I noticed that she had a very laid-back attitude whether toward the lessons or toward the exams in the first year of junior high school. She would answer the questions when asked and participate in the activities when group work was involved; otherwise, she was not what I would call an avid English learner. Even so, she revealed her interest in English clearly by telling me on the first or second day of school that she always loved to learn English. Also, she always maintained her average scores above 96 on the monthly tests. She was quite satisfied with the scores even though she admitted later in the interview that she could have done better if she had taken those tests more seriously.
I knew I could do better, but at that time, I thought… I don’t know.
The scores were good enough for me. I was paying much attention to my grades like I do now. (3rd interview, 2009)
However, in her second year, because of the constant fighting between Yvonne’s parents as mentioned earlier, she could not concentrate on anything except for the domestic turbulence, her interest in English declined gradually. Yvonne’s distraction was easy to detect when she often zoned out in class and on a test. Even though she always had a carefree attitude with regard to her academic performance, she was never nonchalant for that matter. She would not have come to a test totally unprepared.
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However, on several occasions, I found that she skimmed through her textbook
frantically and studied at the last minute before a test. When I asked if she had reviewed the lessons at the previous night, she often gave me a sheepish smile and shook her head.
Other than that, she would not give specific reason why she did not study or why she suddenly lost interest in English. At that period of time, it seemed to me that her grades suffered greatly, but upon closer look, she still managed to score an average of 92 in her monthly test in spite of her lack of attention in class. It was in the first half of her senior year that she paid the price for her inattentiveness.
At this point, her scores dropped to 90 in average, which were still better than most of her classmates, but she came to me one day looking disturbed and asked me what she could do to make her grades better. It was the first time she showed that she cared about her scores more than what she let on. Also, her attitude changed from relaxed to
attentive since she began her third year of junior high school. When I was teaching in class, I could see clearly that she was paying full attention. She raised her hand
constantly to answer my questions, unlike in the first year she seldom took initiatives in class. She also jotted down every note I said while we were reviewing the test, even if she got the answers right. Later in the second interview, I asked her why she felt the need to write down every note even for the questions she knew the answers to. She told me, “My mind is clear now and I know where my path will lead me, and that is to be an English teacher, so I need to prepare myself in every way possible.” (During a
ten-minute recess between classes, 2009)
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In the second half of her senior year and also her last semester in junior high school, she showed more ambition in making her English better. And her average score rose to 94. Yvonne said she thought there was still a lot of improvement to make, but all in all she was quite pleased with herself for the effort she made in it. She often consulted me for how to make more progress. Yet even when she was most eager to catch up what she missed in the previous year within a short period of time, she did not once think about resorting to the cram schools just like she did for math. She strongly believed that her own effort and the regular courses at school were enough to help her achieve her goal.
I think I can study English by myself. I don’t need cram schools. As long as I pay attention in class, I know I’ll be fine. (6th interview, 2010)
(C) Yvonne and her friends
During the last two years in the elementary school, Yvonne had a group of friends who loved learning English as much as she did. Yvonne remembered they were always in the same group when their teacher asked them to team up. As it was mentioned before, she recalled there was one time when her teacher took the class to Keelung Harbor and asked them to find a foreigner to talk to and take a picture with. She and her friends were the most active team. Even though their English abilities were still limited, Yvonne and her friends liked to talk in English. She said,
My friends and I liked to chat in English, or at least, we tried to. As
My friends and I liked to chat in English, or at least, we tried to. As