INTERVIEWER:
Good morning. Can you introduce yourself in a few words, please?
LEAH:
My name is Leah. I’m fourteen years old and my native language is German, but I also speak English and I’m currently learning Spanish.
FLORA:
My name is Flora and I’m 14 years old. My native language is Hungarian and I also speak fluent German and English and I’m currently learning French.
INTERVIEWER:
Okay. And how long have you been students of the Bilingual Junior High School?
LEAH:
Four years now.
FLORA:
Yes.
LEAH:
It’s the end of our fourth year.
FLORA:
Yeah.
INTERVIEWER:
Okay, and do you like studying subjects using a foreign language?
LEAH:
I like it. Because I think it’s just more fun because I if you study in the language that you learned and it’s not your mother’s tongue, it’s like I feel more confident because I can say like, yeah, I’m studying and it’s not my first language but I still manage to do it and I think that’s pretty cool.
FLORA:
I like it too, and agree with you on that – that it’s more fun and also especially if you’re good at the language and it’s also cool if people tell you, “Wow…
LEAH: Yeah!
FLORA: …you’re really good!”
INTERVIEWER:
Okay, and do you find it more complex to study a subject using English instead of German?
LEAH:
No, not at all.
FLORA:
It definitely is different. Because like, if I, if I learn in German, it’s like, I have it in my native language and, but it’s not like I forget how to speak English.
LEAH:
Like, I would say, I’m on the exact same level, but sometimes, it’s like, when I study English, there’s like a switch I have to turn on and sometimes I even forget, when I for example, when I learn Spanish, my vocabularies that I write down, I sometimes, I write the German word, then the English word and then the Spanish word for, like, so I understand it better. And sometimes I forget the word for English or for German and that gets a little bit confusing sometimes, but it doesn’t happen often.
FLORA:
I mean for me, if it’s not even easier to speak in English than German or especially Hungarian, because I only speak Hungarian at home, really and German I speak with my fellow classmates and my acquaintances and friends and also English and that’s what I also like at the school that you can. It’s not weird to just start speaking English with your friends at any time because, and that’s what also makes it fun. But it does not require any more of my concentration to, you know, focus on English. But rather than it would cause my concentration to, you know, actually and then do that switch, do I know which language you currently I have to speak. And my problem sometimes is that if we have German and I’m like “Oh my God” like because sometimes I have a feeling that I’m starting to get better at English than in German and I like know a word in English, that I’m like, “What is that word in German?” That switch and that the fact that you know what, you know something in in one language but don’t know the other.
LEAH:
It just happened to me. Like, I think yesterday, I was like, writing down my vocabulary and I was like, what was the German word for living room again? And I was sitting there like “Don’t Google it! No, that would be so embarrassing!”
FLORA:
Yeah, and yeah, you don’t want to Google it, because you’re like “I know I know it.”
LEAH:
Yeah
FLORA:
Like that’s so uncool but
INTERVIEWER:
Okay, so, do you think it’s useful for the future?
LEAH:
It surely is, ’cause everyone speaks English in our world now. At least the most people. I know a lot of older people that don’t speak English but that’s mainly because they haven’t learned it and they don’t need it anymore. But on the Internet especially it’s really nice to speak German to communicate with other people.
FLORA:
I agree. There’s definitely a lot more English in the (fret) and on social media almost everything is in English unless you’re on a particular part of the platform, where it’s like, only your mother language. So yeah. It’s so it’s very, very useful and again, with older people, they just didn’t learn it at their school, other schools back in the day. So…
LEAH:
But then again, I know a lot of older people that speak like languages, for example, I had a grandmother and she spoke French.
FLORA:
Yeah, my grandmother spoke Russian, because she grew up in Communism, and if so, that’s yeah….
LEAH:
They know like, she was like fluent in that language and it’s like they learned it. But it’s not a it’s a, it’s a worldwide language but not like English.
FLORA:
Yeah.
LEAH:
And that’s like they know a language and they learned in school, but it’s not English cuz I got time to didn’t ya?
FLORA:
At that time, it wasn’t what was important for them, but other than that, yes, it’s very useful.
INTERVIEWER:
So has studying a subject in English increased your interest in the English language?
LEAH:
It truly did. ‘Cause as I started to notice that I got better in English and that I can have conversations with people that don’t speak my first language, I started to become more interested in the language itself and I think it’s, it’s nice to speak English at a higher level. I even, I want to become at that level that I can speak academic English. Because like, I think it’s very impressive.
FLORA:
Me too. I definitely agree on that note, again, I was recently like every time I watch a show like, I personally, I get cringed at the German, the German speakers when they like, translate it and the translation, I get so cringe. So I always watch in the original language, which is most of the time English and every time I hear, like a new word and it’s like, I don’t know that yet, I Google it and I’m like, I want to use that in my next conversation with a person because it’s so cool,
LEAH:
Yeah
FLORA:
and it’s impressive and also, people are not just, like oh well yeah she can speak English like it’s fine, she’ll she’ll be able to understand but it’s like No, she can speak it so well
LEAH:
because like, you speak English, but then again you kind of don’t and then.
FLORA:
Yeah.
LEAH:
When you talk to other people it’s like…
FLORA:
Yeah.
LEAH:
Do I speak, like… What? So like…
FLORA:
Yeah
LEAH:
Using vocabulary from people that speak English is so good. So, like, you, you get a pile of it.
FLORA:
Yeah.
INTERVIEWER:
Okay. Do you think that using English in other subjects like Geography or History has allowed you to improve your English?
LEAH:
Kinda, because like for example, Geography they have a bunch of different vocabularies but then again in our English lessons, we do a lot of different topics. We had a history the other day so like about important people from the past so we also get that vocabulary from our English lessons but it’s and it’s a nice practice and you still learn some words that you haven’t learned in English
INTERVIEWER:
So there’s a lot of cross-curriculum stuff in your English lessons?
LEAH:
Yeah, so it’s not just learning English, but it’s like we got a topic and we learn about that and I think it’s so cool.
FLORA:
I also agree on that too. And also in the future, if you’re going to be in a foreign country and somebody, because you just move there and that’s where you live now and you speak English with a person and they want to talk about, for example, something that happened in history like a period or something, then you will be able to talk about without having to think like Yeah the “kalte Krieg”, what is that? like you, you know, it and then you can just talk about it, smoothly with no problems at all, understanding it.
LEAH:
Absolutely.
FLORA:
Because even though you could be able to speak English, if you don’t know what for example, something like, that happened in history is called in a different language then it’s a bit hard…
LEAH:
‘Cause there’s like the basic English to have a conversation. And then there’s like knowing the words from specific topics, if you take a, for example, an English class online or with an app, you will never learn for example, about the Cold War or something…
FLORA:
Yeah.
LEAH:
As you just said. You will never get to know these vocabularies
FLORA:
Because this is almost as if you were in a country where the pupils study English and that’s their, you know, because they also learn the other subjects in English.
LEAH:
Yeah.
FLORA:
So that’s, I like that very much.
LEAH:
Yes.
INTERVIEWER:
Okay. Do you think that studying a subject in English requires more attention and concentration during classroom lessons when compared to lessons in German?
LEAH:
I don’t think so. As we said before, there’s a little switch that we have to turn on, kind of.
But I would say, for me, personally, my English and my German is on the same level, almost and I was in primary school and that primary school was also bilingual, so I learned from a very young age, that there’s the German word and then there’s the English word and for me, that’s kind of the same, and I don’t really have to think about, what does that mean in German? Or I have to, I have to have the picture in my mind to it’s, it just kind of works for me. And so there’s not a problem at all, I’d say, except for the switching part.
FLORA:
Yeah, for me the same, as I’ve mentioned. Again. Sometimes you know, you’ve just got to be like, okay, I’m speaking English now, I’m speaking German now and for me as well. Even when I lived in Hungary in kindergarten, we already had native little, so teachers who spoke English with you, or read English story books. So, I also pretty much grew up with the language, it’s one that comes to me a lot more naturally too, than German sometimes.
INTERVIEWER:
So, what would you say are the pros and cons of the way we teach and study in our school?
LEAH:
I think a big pro is that we learn English on a very good like basis and it’s not like I know some schools that like just have English lessons like one or two times a week and because we’re a bilingual school we have almost every lesson. There is a tiny bit of English if not the whole lesson is in English and so we learn it faster. And I think that’s good because then you can talk to other people in English and you learn it. As I said, you learn it faster because we do so much English. So there’s not really the process of years of years to learn.
FLORA:
I agree. It’s, I feel like it the way we do it here again, as you said that, he could do almost every subject in in both languages. So it’s a lot more efficient. And, yeah, I feel like you just you, you can just if you speak it more then also, when you listen to it more often, it gets easier and easier. And also after you finish the school, like, if you go to high school afterwards, you’ll be ahead of them like it so far ahead of them, and you won’t have to spend, as much time, you know, preparing for like some type of test. The only thing that I feel like is a is a con again, is if you speak many languages then it’s a bit hard to, you know, know which way you’re speaking and Also and we don’t do as much grammar. I feel like hear it. We just focus on, you know, we can speak and we can write because our tests are like there’s a
listening and reading and writing and in other schools and in high school, I’ve noticed that like my friends who are in high school now they have like in their test to have like a different section for grammar. And of course I if you ask me what past simple is of, you know, something, I don’t know. But if there’s something more complex or something, then I just have to be like, wait, what is that again? So that’s I feel like that’s the only part that’s missing a bit because that’s what we’ll need that. But but none in the speaking process like not in a foreign country you won’t need that. Nobody’s going to ask you the present perfect tense of something, but you know in future schools…
LEAH:
Another contra is that I have a friend and she was in that school that we are now and she is now in a higher school in the first year and she writes like like 5, like the worst grade that you can have because like her English is too good. She’s so far ahead in that class that the teacher is literally mad at her. And now she gets like bad grades so maybe we’re just too good, maybe that’s the contra!
FLORA:
I’ve heard the same stuff about like my, you know, I had a friend who again, went to the same school and now she’s in the in a different high school, and they have English and she writes fours and like a lot of like and it’s it’s insane because she always tells me that it annoys her so much that you can literally speak better English than their English teacher. And they sometimes like, they don’t know, the words or, they don’t understand what they mean, like if they write text, and she doesn’t spell it correctly and she probably like puts it in Google because she doesn’t know it herself, and it doesn’t come up, she’ll just cross that out and like, that’s not a word. And that is that… that’s I feel like it’s not a con in this school in particular.
LEAH:
No no,
FLORA:
It’s just in general
LEAH:
it’s not a con, the school is good, it’s like, because I know a lot of schools that don’t have any native teachers at all, or just one or two and we have so many
FLORA:
That’s true.
LEAH:
and yeah, and it’s also it’s very good that we have so many native speakers, because then we can learn English from someone that doesn’t speak German that good.
FLORA:
Yeah
LEAH:
So, like that helped me a lot as well.
FLORA:
Pronunciation as well, if you just hear it, it’ll come naturally
LEAH:
Exactly. So yeah, some schools just don’t put English…
FLORA:
As, like, as, they put, don’t put it as, like we put it first and this…
LEAH:
And they’re just like, whatever, and I think that’s why…
FLORA:
Throw it in there because it’s a must.
INTERVIEWER:
Okay, thank you very much for your time.
