This essay appeared in the 2021 Fueling Discovery special section of the Wisconsin State Journal on 10/17/21. View the full 2021 Fueling Discovery PDF here.
About the author
Sakuni Egodawatte is majoring in computer sciences and linguistics. Her most recent research was at a Research Experiences for Undergraduates site studying automatic sarcasm detection, to ultimately aid people on the autism spectrum improve social interactions. She grew up in Naperville, Illinois, and expects to graduate in May 2022.
World languages skills are in demand in both the public and private sector, and they have multitudes of benefits beyond just the ability to speak another language. Yet many world languages students don’t fully realize the breadth of their skills, or how to market them in a job interview. Researching the career pathways of world languages students at UW-Madison with PhD candidate Ryan Goble in Second Language Acquisition allowed me to understand and tackle this issue—and taught me something important about myself as well.
During the 2019-2020 academic year I was able to sit in on in-depth, recorded interviews with students to find out their perceptions of the language learning classroom and their future career plans. We also had the opportunity to listen to sessions between students and their academic advisors. We closely transcribed these interviews and advising sessions, marking them for significant statements and noting things like hesitance and laughter. Essentially, we learned the hopes and fears of 44 brilliant language students.
We also learned that most students hesitate to be positioned as “fluent” in their world language. They struggle to understand how their many language experiences culminate in skills that they can highlight in interviews, despite advisors giving them lists of what those skills could include. The students were having difficulty seeing themselves reflected in those lists, despite having command over their target languages.
We recognized that the world language classroom is a great place to address these challenges that students are facing, by providing direct guidance on how to market their language learning experiences in professional settings and encouraging language use outside of the classroom.
This experience helped me realize that research wasn’t the insurmountable task that it seemed to be when I first heard about it. It helped me see that research isn’t just people in white coats locked away in a lab, and that it looks vastly different depending on the topic. I learned that the research I conducted could have a direct impact on those around me, and even reach people far away who are looking to improve their own language programs. Who could have known that the late nights spent transcribing hours of other students’ voices could somehow connect me to people I will probably never meet? Empowering my peers through research empowered me, too.
