An interview with Renata Rivkin Haag, Coordinator of Wellesley College’s English Language Resource Center

Renata Rivkin Haag and I met on a Monday night in a small, plain study room on the fourth floor of Wellesley College’s Clapp Library.  Amid the dull hum of library air conditioning, she told me she’d just come from soccer practice.  (Whose soccer practice was unclear—with Renata in sneakers and sweats, and with her curly hair pulled back in a ponytail, it could have been her children’s or her own.)  Under normal circumstances we might have run into each other downstairs, in the more elegant Sanger Room, where Renata works as the coordinator of Wellesley’s English Language Resource Center (ELRC), an offshoot of the Pforzheimer Learning and Teaching Center, focused on English language teaching.

Renata spoke to me about her work as an English teacher, both in the ELRC and at the Showa Boston Institute for Language and Culture, a Japanese women’s college in Jamaica Plain.  Renata’s teaching method, she says, is very “intuitive.”  She teaches pronunciation, for instance, by paying attention to her own speech, and telling her students to pay attention to theirs.  In telling me about this more technical side of her work, Renata revealed her personal teaching philosophy.  She’s committed to developing a good relationship with her students, based on understanding and reciprocity.  “Even if it’s just basic,” she says, “taking the time to learn something from another culture shows a lot of respect.  When you say hello to someone in their own language, people get so excited.  Even if you don’t know anything about it, you’re saying, ‘I’m open to learning about your culture.’  Meaning, ‘I’m open to learning about you.’  It’s one of the most honorable gestures.”

Renata feels conflicted about the use of English as a lingua franca.  When non-native speakers use English to communicate with each other, she says, there is a loss of cross-cultural understanding.  She gives the example of a business contract between a German speaker and a Chinese speaker, both of whom are using English: “The Chinese person hasn’t learned that Germans start almost every negotiation by saying ‘no.’  They’re not really saying ‘no’; they’re saying, ‘Convince me why I should say yes.’  Even though these negotiators are saying words everyone theoretically understands, they don’t have the same meaning.”  In other words, even if there’s no lexical miscommunication, cultural understanding—a key component of the negotiation—gets lost in translation.

For Renata, the issue is more than purely theoretical. She’s familiar with it from personal experience.  After studying Spanish in high school and college, Renata moved to Germany to teach English, where “for the first time in my life I was illiterate.  I realized that this is what a person experiences if they’re learning English when they come to the States for the first time.  So when I teach, it’s something I carry with me.”  These experiences include the kind of linguistic mishaps that elicit empathy for one’s students.  Renata frequently shares stories of her own howlers in the classroom.  One memorable exchange occurred during her time in Germany, where she and her husband lived on the fifth floor of an apartment building: “I came down to get something from my father-in-law and went to run back up the stairs.  He asked me, ‘Why aren’t you using the elevator?’  I said, ‘Oh, this is good for your butt muscles; I want to make my muscles tighter.’  But what I said in German was, ‘I want to make my butt tighter.’  Which doesn’t refer to your muscles, but rather is something that gay men say…  Later a gay male friend heard me say this and said, ‘No, no, don’t say that, sweetie.’”  A mistake, Renata says, she hasn’t made since.

It’s clear that for Renata, foreign language teaching goes beyond checking grammar and pronunciation.  Genuinely connecting with her students is what makes all the difference.  In other words:  to err is human.  To teach a foreign language is to make your errors useful.

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Edited Transcript

Emma Stelter:  I’d like to ask you first about the English Language Resource Center.  When you’re working in the ELRC, what kind of problems do people come in with, and how do you address them?  What are some of the techniques you use to help them out?

Renata Rivkin Haag:  I would say 85% is going over papers and editing with students.  A smaller percentage of students want help with pronunciation or building their vocabulary, and in that case we just speak.  When I hear a sound that they’re making incorrectly, it’s just really helping them to get the position of their tongue and teeth right.  I have students put their hands on their throat, to feel the vibrations or to hear where the sound is coming from.

ES:  It sounds very technical.

RR:  There’s a lot of technical things about it—there are many technical things people do—but for me it’s actually more intuitive.  You can teach it more naturally if you listen to how you speak.

ES:  In that intuitive teaching style, are there certain things that are more challenging to explain?

RR:  Spelling makes no sense whatsoever.  Explaining spelling rules…you need not do it.  There’s also a lot of spoken English, a lot of idioms and expressions.  Like, “I’m going to follow up with you tomorrow.”  It’s hard to explain why it’s “follow-up with you” and not “follow through with you,” or “follow with you”…  Grammar rules are easier to explain.  There’s a concrete rule; either the student gets it or they don’t.  If they don’t get it, it’s a nice challenge for me to figure out a way for them to get it and to remember how to use it.

ES:  Are these the same kinds of things you do at Showa?

RR:  Yes.  At Showa I use the same tools, except I work with only Japanese speakers, which is more challenging, because then they rely on speaking their native language in class for understanding and clarification.  When they don’t understand me they just ask the person next to them.  Whereas when you’re in a mixed group, the person next to you may not speak your language.  Then even if you’re asking a student, you have to rely on an English explanation.

ES:  Obviously teaching in front of a classroom and working one-on-one with students are different regardless of subject matter, but in general, do you find that there’s a lot of cultural exchange between you and your students?

RR:  Absolutely.  So, I’ll talk about Showa first.  When I’m teaching students from all the same background, I might ask something like, “How would you say this in Japanese?”  When you understand that there’s no male or female pronouns in Japanese, you understand why when Japanese students speak English, they often mix up “he” and “she.”  I can ask my students to teach me words in Japanese, and I mess those words up a million times.  I tell them a story about when I were traveling, or about when I learned another language and how I made mistakes.  They tell me stories about how they made mistakes in their English classes, and it really opens up a dialogue.

ES:  Would you say giving examples of your linguistic mishaps to your students facilitates teaching?

RR:  Yes.  It builds trust.  When I tell them about how I made mistakes, they know it’s safe for them to make a mistake.  I’m not gonna yell at them.  They’re not gonna get a bad grade.

ES:  How are things different in the ELRC?

RR:  I really like the ELRC because it’s one-on-one.  Even if I’m correcting someone’s basic grammar mistakes, here students’ speaking and understanding is often at a much higher level, and that’s really nice.  After my session ends, I can talk with them about their culture, where they’re from, why they came to Wellesley…  You build a relationship a lot faster, because here you’re working very closely with the students and judging their work.  Students may not internalize it so much, but when you ask somebody to read your paper, in essence you’re exposing your weakness, which might be, “My English is not the greatest,” or “my ideas are not the greatest.”  It’s a very interesting, powerful kind of bond, even if you never see them again.

ES:  Can you speak a little bit about your own language learning and how it has influenced your teaching?

RR:  Well, I spent four years in high school attempting to learn Spanish, and another two years in college re-learning what I hadn’t learned.  But then I moved to San Diego, where I was close to Tijuana.  There you often have a need and, in my case, a desire to speak Spanish with people in the community.  Then I moved to Germany, and for the first time in my life I was illiterate.  That was a very important experience for my teaching.  I realized that this is what a person experiences if they’re learning English when they come to the States for the first time.  I had this fear of being misunderstood or that people would presume I was dumb because I couldn’t speak the language.  So when I teach, it’s something I carry with me.  I tell my students the most embarrassing mistakes I’ve made speaking other languages, and we laugh, because they’re funny stories.  But—again with the trust—it’s good to know that your teacher also made mistakes while learning a language.

ES:  Could you share one of the stories that you tell your students?  If you’re willing, that is.

RR:  Well, they’re not that embarrassing.  So, here’s one I tell my students.  I went down to Mexico with two friends who were fluent in Spanish—I wasn’t.  We stayed with this family who lived in a small village.  There was a mother, a father, two little kids, and some chickens that would run in and out the door.  I can’t remember what I did, but I told the mother, “Soy embarazada, lo siento, soy embarazada.  I’m really sorry; I’m so embarrassed.” And the woman’s just looking me like, “No.  No, no, no, no, no.”  My friend Eric comes in the door and hears part of this conversation, and says, “Renata, you just told her you’re pregnant.”  Now I’m really embarrassed.  But now I’ll never say “soy embarazada” again, unless I really am.  In Germany, I made a slightly different mistake.  We lived on the fifth floor of an apartment building with an elevator.  I came down to get something from my father-in-law and went to run back up the stairs.  He asked me, “Why aren’t you using the elevator?”  And I said, “Oh, this is good for your butt muscles; I want to make my muscles tighter.”  But what I said in German was, “I want to make my butt tighter.”  Which doesn’t refer to your muscles, but rather is something that gay men say…  Later a gay male friend heard me say this and said, “No, no, don’t say that, sweetie.”  I was like, “Oh my God, I just said that to my father-in-law last week; I am so embarrassed.”  But I did not say “soy embarazada.”

ES:  Slightly broader topic.  What are your thoughts about foreign language education for native speakers of English in the US?

RR:  I personally think learning a second language, no matter who you are or where you are, is very important.  One, it’s important for just communicating with other people.  Two, you never learn another language without learning about the culture too, even if you’re just in a classroom.  Three, learning another language helps you understand your own language.  I never understood English—the grammar—as well as I did until I started learning German.  You really start to think about language and how it’s used.  But I really think that even if it’s just basic, taking the time to learn something from another culture shows a lot of respect.  When you say hello to someone in their own language, people get so excited.  Even if you don’t know anything about it, you’re saying, “I’m open to learning about your culture.”  Meaning, “I’m open to learning about you.”  It’s one of the most honorable gestures.  I think Americans are at a great disadvantage as a society.  Yes, there are many Americans who speak a second language, but there are so many who don’t speak more than one language, or if they do learn a language they start in ninth grade versus starting in first grade.  To wait that long is a disservice.

ES:  Thinking about learning another language as a gesture of respect, do you feel that the fact that the predominance of American English in particular might be a problem in global interactions?

RR:  So…yes, it does.  Here’s an example:  I’ve worked with Germans, teaching them English, so they can go to China and communicate with Chinese people…who had to be taught English.  So now you have two non-native speakers, negotiating contracts in a language that is not their first.  There are different power dynamics if one person has better control over the language than the other, but overall there are all sorts of miscommunication.  Just the style of the word “no,” for instance.  Having learned English and not German, the Chinese person hasn’t learned that Germans start almost every negotiation by saying “no.”  They’re not really saying “no”; they’re really saying, “Convince me why I should say yes.”  And when the German is learning English, they’re not learning the culture of the Chinese speaker.  Everyone is speaking through an English lens.  So even though these negotiators are saying words everyone theoretically understands, they don’t have the same meaning.

ES:  There’s kind of a degree of separation.

RR:  Exactly.  At least if the German person learns Chinese and speaks it poorly, and the Chinese person learns German and speaks it poorly, they’re learning each other’s cultures.  I mean, I get it; you can’t learn every language.  You need some kind of lingua franca.  You do lose something, but it is a smaller world and you have to make compromises.

ES:  I have one last question.  What do you enjoy most about your work?

RR:  Hands down, I enjoy the people.  I would love to go to every single country in the entire world, and that is not possible.  Teaching English is the one job where people of the world come to me.  Especially here at Wellesley, I meet people from all walks of life, from all age groups, cultures, social backgrounds…I get to meet them and talk to them.  It’s the most amazing job.  I wouldn’t change it for the world.