BLOG #4 Anketa

While preparing to pass out my surveys on bilingualism at an event at Our Lady of Czestochowa Church, I had to think about how I was going to introduce my research project to people in Polish. Short and polite!

"Dziendobry, mam na imie Malgosia. Koncze studia magistra i pracuje nad projektem o ludziach mowiacych dwoma jezykami. Czy Pan/Pani by prosze mi wypelnil(a) ta ankete?"

"Good morning, my name is Malgosia. I am finishing my Master's studies and am working on a research project on bilingualism. Would you please be so kind to fill out this survey?"

Survey = anketa (I learned a new Polish word!)

The Polish Scouting Organization whose weekly troop meetings take place in one of my church's buildings, held a yearly bazaar Saturday and Sunday. I knew that a lot of families were going to attend, especially on Saturday because the leader scouts prepared an indoor bon fire in the evening for all of the boy and girl scouts. I put on my girl scout uniform and went to Kinko's to make 100 peach colored copies of my survey. 

I brought cake pops to donate to the bake sale fundraiser and spent some time at the table telling friends about my research project. They were very willing to fill it out and this made me feel more comfortable before branching out to strangers! I am glad that I brought a box filled with my surveys, sharpened pencils, a sharpener, and some boards to write on. It made the process easier for me to carry around my kit :)I waited until people finished eating before approaching them. It was easy to start a conversation with people because they were sitting at large tables with family and friends. I waited for a break in their conversation and sat down next to them. Sometimes I got entire tables to fill out the surveys! I lingered around while offering their children stickers, giving me an opportunity to answer questions, observe, and take note of what people were discussing. It was great to hear people having discussions!! 

I noticed that many people were not seeing the first piece of information that needed to be checked off on the survey (Child's gender M/F). I made sure to check it off correctly each time I collected a survey if it was incomplete. I also noticed that people were just checking off if the father, mother, children, and grandparents spoke a language other than English instead of listing the languages. People were curious about question #8 Does your child's school offer a partial or total language immersion program? No one seemed to have heard of such a program or school. I think that it would be interesting to learn more about total immersion programs offered here in Michigan. Shannon suggested for me to visit some of these schools. What a great idea! I remember how disappointed I was when I first learned about Montessori, Waldorf, and Reggio Emilia schools in my fifth year of being in the education program at Oakland University. I wish that I had learned about these different schools earlier. I am grateful for the research aspect of studying for a Master's degree. It is making me become a responsible advocate of so many aspects of education!

I took part in conversations about the concerns and frustrations of parents and children regarding learning a second language. Some barriers with parents teaching and maintaining their child's second language included not having sufficient amount of time, resources, and opportunities for their children practicing a second language. Some of these reasons included only one parent teaching the child a second language, laziness, and an already overwhelming amount of school homework sent home. Most parents who made a commitment in teaching and maintaining their child's second language involved their children in attending Second Language School, religion classes, dance, and joining the Polish Scouting Organization (all offered through church). It sounds like being a part of a community is a big part of being successful in becoming bilingual! 

I was able to collect to collect 64 surveys on Saturday and 24 on Sunday for a total of 88 out of 100 surveys completed! I know I was successful because I chose to conduct the live survey in a personal way by approaching people. Everyone was willing to participate because people knew me, they had time to fill it out, I remained in the vicinity to answer questions and collect the surveys, and because it directly involved their children. 

I am excited to process the results and read all of the constructive response questions. I am also looking forward to seeing the correlations between attaining bilingualism and the efforts and opportunities that go along with success of becoming bilingual. I am interested to see what struggles, concerns, and frustrations people have with bilingualism.