My Plurilingual Journey

May 31, 2020
6 min read

Updated: Jan 28, 2021

I think one question that a lot of new teachers ask themselves is how am I going to teach my English language learners? This was definitely a question I asked myself when I started this journey to becoming a teacher. I believe the best way to begin figuring out how to best teach ELLs is to first consider my own experience with language. So, join me on my plurilingual journey, as I dive into how I learned to speak English, Lingala, and French!

Now let's talk about how I learned all the languages I speak...

My parents immigrated to America from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kinshasa.

Their first languages are Lingala and French. I was raised in Raleigh, North Carolina and my first language is English.

I bet you're wondering how that happens right?

Well...

My dad spoke to me in English and my mom spoke to me in Lingala.

I went to school where the only language spoken was English. I learned how to read in English, and the books I read were only in English.

I went to preschool so I was communicating with english speaking people at a young age. It's also safe to say that ALL of my friends spoke English as well. Moral of this story is that the constant exposure to the English language helped me learn. Even though I had a lot of exposure to Lingala at home, the amount of exposure I had to English was immeasurably more because it extended outside of my home and culture.

When I was learning Lingala, my mom did not intentionally teach me, but that is how she communicated with me 85% of the time. Now that I think about it I guess all I did was listen, and as a result I learned Lingala from a very young age. 🤷🏾‍♀️ 🤷🏾‍♀️ 🤷🏾‍♀️

When I was old enough I would imitate my mom on the phone, and I would repeat the words she would say. I acquired Lingala through habit and formation. The more my mom encouraged me, the more I would continue to reproduce the different language patterns until it became automatic (Coelho, 2004).

I would listen in all my dad's phone conversations, and ask him what certain words mean while he was on the phone. That helped me to piece together sentences whenever I would imitate my mother.

At one time in my life I lived with my cousins and they spoke Lingala and French at home with me. I would talk to them in Lingala and they would respond in Lingala or french until they were comfortable

speaking English.

I always had the opportunity to talk to relatives who still lived in Kinshasa over the phone.

I also grew up in a Congolese church where the language spoken was either Lingala or French. So it's safe to say that I the opportunity to be in constant conversation with family, relatives, and family friends who spoke either Lingala, French or both (Coelho, 2004). The more I attempted to speak the language, the more I was encouraged to speak more. It made me feel like I was apart of something that meant so much to the people in my life who speak the language. It's like I was keeping the language alive, in order to keep the culture alive so I always remember who I am.

The more I think about my plurilingual journey, the more I can conceptualize the idea that I basically lived in two different worlds. I spoke english everyday from the time I started talking, but my home was very much culturally Congolese so I also heard Lingala everyday since the time I was born.

All the experiences I had with Lingala were all in family and cultural environments. I always remember singing songs, acting in Christmas plays, and celebrating in Lingala at church every Sunday.

I was a flower girl so many times when was younger, and they were all Congolese weddings with a union and reception spoken all in Lingala. From listening to music in the car with my parents, and singing with them during the drive. Singing songs in Lingala and French at church every Sunday afternoon or watching music videos on VHS on a Saturday afternoon with my family. I learned Lingala and french by interacting with family and relatives and having to use Lingala as a tool everyday (Coelho, 2004).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS3gbH1Ew00

If it wasn't an independent activity or if I wasn't talking to my friends, I was always listening to other people speak Lingala. Like this christian song from the popular Congolese music group Makoma. This was played so many times in my house growing up, that I still know every single word. #childhood #congoleseclassic

I cannot forget to mention that if I ever acted up at school, at the grocery store, at church, or any where else in public my mom only corrected me in Lingala. Which always scared me way more because of the way the Lingala sounds and how the words are pronounced in order to invoke a certain feeling in someone. In this case FEAR! It was scary then, but it't hilarious now. I believe because Lingala is her first language, my mom did that very well. #dontmesswithmama

There was a period in time when I lived with some of my younger and older cousins all of whom's first language was not English.

It was quite interesting because we established a way to communicate while also helping them learn English.

I would speak to them in English, and they would reply to me in Lingala or French.

I became like a young little language broker in my home for so many people.

I was helping them learn english by just communicating in English, but they were helping me learn our native language by doing the same in Lingala and French.

Although I have had so many opportunities to communicate in Lingala, it was not always easy and I have faced a few challenges. When I spoke in Lingala or French people would make fun of my "American" accent. I understood the joke, but that definitely made me insecure about speaking Lingala in front of people (Coelho, 2004).

I was even more insecure about speaking in French, because that became like a third language in our home, and it was not spoken around me as often as Lingala. I can understand French fluently but I cannot speak fluent French. As a result, I do not usually feel confident when I have to speak french with other french speaking people.🥴🤷🏾‍♀️

The greatest success about all of this is I can speak and understand three different languages, and I have never had to learn either of these languages in a formal way.

It's also amazing that my parents were not intentionally trying to teach me Lingala or French, and I was able to learn by just listening and talking. It was helpful to my parents that I could speak and understand the language because it allowed them to teach me more about our culture.

My second language is tied directly to my culture, which shapes my identity. My parents are immigrants but they never wanted me to misunderstand where we came from. Even though I was raised in America, being Congolese always came first and that also included language. It is the way my entire family communicated first. English was my first language, but Lingala was always first at home even though my parents always spoke to me in English.

English is my first language and that also shapes my identity simply because it is the language I speak first. English is how I communicate, go to school, work, read write, and everything else first. So imagine how hard it would be for me if I somehow moved to a country where the national language was not English. 😱

Starting this plurilingual journey has really allowed me to think deeply about how can I support the language of ELL students as a future teacher?

To answer my initial question, how am I going to teach my English language learners? I can simply take some ideas from my plurilingual journey. I will always encourage them to speak their first language in class because the constant conversation will only help them learn more (Cummins & Early, 2015). I think by including their first language in their learning, I will be able to create a safe space in the classroom, and it will actually help to encourage the english learning (Cummins & Early, 2015). I would allow the ELLs multiple opportunities to communicate in English, reading books, or listening to music. I hope to remember to limit constant correction of ELLs so that I do not increase their anxiety about speaking English in the classroom (Coelho, 2004). The more comfortable your ELLs become the more they will be comfortable speaking in both English and their first language in the classroom.