Megan Monaghan

Dr. Lipsett

RELI 220b

4 December 2017

Service Learning and Intercultural Communication:

Volunteering with the migrant community in Winston Salem has been a fantastic learning

experience for me. I want to continue to grow with this type of service learning in the future. I’ve

loved learning about different languages and cultures since I was a little girl. I practice French

every day; I spend my free time researching linguistics (especially bilingualism and second

language acquisition) for fun. I want to teach English as a Second Language (ESL) abroad after

graduation, then complete a graduate degree in Linguistics or Intercultural Communication and

Discourse Analysis. I took this course because I want to learn more about practical applications

and issues of communication in multicultural environments. This class has introduced me to

many fascinating areas of study in practical linguistics in migrant dense populations in the

United States. I have improved my own style of communicating across cultures and around

language barriers through the service component of this course.

The first time I went to the ESL class at the YMCA, I was already exhausted from a long

day. It’s a fast paced environment that can be overwhelming with no prior experience-- and

that’s just for the volunteers. I have immense respect for the students there; I can’t imagine

keeping up with everything going on there if most of the discourse was in a language I wasn’t

familiar with. I struggled with teaching and communicating with someone I didn’t share a

common language with. I was working with a woman who had just come to the U.S. It was her
first English class, which happened to be on medical terminology. I definitely was not ready

when I started, but Maria was so patient with me. Medical literacy is a vital skill set to have for

those thrust into a new country, but it can be overwhelming for students. In comparison, it took

me seven years of continuous classes to learn enough French to reach medical terminology.

Volunteering with the YMCA’s ESL program made me realize how much I interpret and explain

English in academic and linguistic terms. I do want to keep learning more about academic

aspects of linguistics and intercultural communication, but I need to learn to code switch to a

style of communication that’s more beginner-friendly to be a better teacher. Trying to teach

others taught me that I know next to nothing.

I have learned a lot about communicating with non-native English speakers from the

teachers and students at ESL classes. I have learned to watch for what Janet Ray, the morning

childcare leader, calls “english receptive behavior,” non-language cues that the kids understand

our target language. Watching the kids’ growth every session has been so inspiring. I’ve been

curious about second language acquisition for years, so it has been great to help people learn a

new language. So many of these kids come alive over the course of a few weeks. I tutored one

boy in English writing the first time I went; he was silent and barely responsive. A few weeks

later, he was a completely different kid. He ran around and played and laughed.

Watching Jillian communicate with the advanced adults has guided me towards a better

ESL communication style. When Jillian is talking to her ESL students, she speaks slowly and

mimics their intonation so that they hear English. My French teachers in high school would do

the same thing, but I did not realize that before I saw it in ESL. It seems like this would help

students separate English phonemes more easily so that they can comprehend them later in
normal speech. It shapes the student toward better comprehension and pronunciation in

successive approximations (Lahey 207). I’m not an expert at speaking in different languages’

intonations yet, but I’m excited to work on it as I continue to learn ESL instruction.

In environments where immigrants are concentrated, they often help each other

communicate with Americans who do not speak their language. When I volunteered for the

Interfaith Celebration of Immigrants and Refugees, many of the children I met did not speak

English. Kids would often come to the face painting booth in pairs, where an English bilingual

child translated for another kid who spoke the same language. The whole experience opened my

eyes to the extent that language fluency is necessary for spontaneous communication. Even from

a young age, migrants who stick together perform vital interpretation tasks for each other, but

this does not negate the need for professional translation. I also witnessed migrant translation in

the YMCA ESL class. With the beginner adults, most of the students worked with a partner who

spoke their native language. They helped each other understand the English that the instructors

showed them by translating it together. Making connections between English and familiar

languages is an important part of learning, because it lets students access new information later

(Lahey 206-207).

One of the most important aspects of refugee empowerment should be refugee leadership

in aid organizations. By encouraging immigrant led aid, we are “increasing their abilities to

protect themselves and also the power that they can bring to the collective movement on behalf

of all groups targeted in Trump’s America,” (Ramberg 1). Many of the adults that I’ve interacted

with have shared that the hardest part of being a refugee is depending other people more than

they used to. Established refugees can learn and rebuild confidence, just like I have, by helping
newcomers. Just like working in language pairs. It also helps reduce paternalism because

refugees understand better than anyone that other refugees have been and can be independant.

Plus, they can surround themselves with new friends and sympathetic confidants sooner. They

can also make great translators for others, because they often know languages that very few

Americans learn.

I would love to extend the ideas of migrant leadership and translation as I continue to

volunteer with the YMCA ESL program. While I was working on restarting their tablets and

downloading language learning apps, Nicole, a teacher and fellow Salem student, told me that

the main populations they see speak Karenni, Swahili, Spanish and Arabic. They have absolutely

no resources online for their main population of Karenni speakers, and only a couple of resources

for Swahili to English students. I want to ask some of the advanced Karenni students about

developing software to help teach Karenni speakers English. I could probably find them someone

who could help with coding and legal rights at Salem. It would be a great way for them to help

other newcomers to English speaking countries, and we might be able to set up an advertising

system to help them make some money off of the program. It might eventually be helpful to

build an official mentorship program, to help newer and more experienced refugees build

confidence, but they seem to already have an informal mentorship system, in their language

partners, that works well for them.

As I continue to volunteer in ESL classes, I hope to continue to develop the way that I

speak English with non-native speakers. I would eventually love to get a certification in

Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) and work as an intern or instructor there until I

complete my undergraduate degree and move abroad.

 Works Cited

Addanki, Dhanya. “Safe House.” Sojourners, 11 Oct. 2017,

sojo.net/magazine/november-2017/safe-house-Christian-immigrant-sanctuary.

Lahey, Benjamin. “Basic Principles of Learning.” and “Memory.” ​Psychology: an introduction.

11th Edition. McGraw-Hill Higher Education, New York, 2012.

Ramberg, Michael. “To Respond to the Crackdown on Immigrants, Start by Listening to

Immigrant Leaders.” Washington Jewish Week, 27 Apr. 2017, pp. 19–20. ProQuest.