>> Mine is kind of embarrassing.
[Laughter]
>> I was in love with Take That,
which is like a boy band from Great Britain.
So I first wanted to understand the lyrics, of course,
and then I always wanted to meet them
and actually be able to talk to them.
So that was like my first step
to actually learning the language.
[Laughter]
>> Just like Anke's experience, I was completely in love
with Mariah Carey's music and Whitney's music.
And in addition to that I also still remember the very first
day of my middle school,
and then I saw this Korean who was a teacher.
And she started to speak different languages.
And she was just like me, a Korean just like me,
but she speaks different languages.
That was huge motivator to me.
I wanted to be like her.
>> Okay. Well, that a role model that,
you know, there's a person.
And that's something that people often say
that in the United States
that we don't have too many role models
that can help motivate us.
We don't have too many bilingual role models or multilingual
or at least, you know, speakers
of the other language to help motivate us.
And it was Elena.
>> So I did have to take English
in my elementary and high school.
And I was pretty good.
I took that as one more subject.
It wasn't anything special, but then when I was 15 I guess,
several foreigners came to our city,
and in Russia we don't have
as many foreigners as you can find here.
So it was something special, and I could talk to them,
and I could understand them,
and I could translate what they were saying to other people.
That was-- that felt nice.
And I thought well, maybe I should become an interpreter.
Maybe I should know English better.
Maybe I should learn more language just to be able
to learn about people in countries.
>>I used to have a student.
He is learning Chinese,
and I was asking him why do you want to learn Chinese.
And he didn't tell me exactly at the very beginning,
but gradually I found
out whenever the class is asking questions,
he's asking question like,
"How do you say your name is beautiful?
How do you say can I dance with you?".
And finally he told me that, "I'm dating with a girl
in China, and I haven't met her yet.
We are talking with each other through internet and phone,
so I hope I can learn more so that I can talk to her."
And also he's a person who's really good at singing.
And his way of learning Chinese is also interesting.
He tries to put what he has learned in Chinese into a song.
Well, also, so that he can sing the song to himself
and more importantly to that girl.
Well, he-- well, I have
like around seven students in that class.
He is really-- he is a really good one.
People come to that class with different purpose.
He might be different from others,
and he uses his own ways.
It really works for him.
>> I'm TA'in with heritage speakers class.
And well, some of them would take Russian in this case,
just because they want to get a grade,
and they think it would easy for them to do that, because some
of them have a lot of experience
of speaking the language in their family.
They may not be good at writing, but they are good at speaking.
So for some of them, it is that.
But many of them are not very confident speakers of Russian,
so it's a hard class for them.
But they often report that it's important for them
to become close to their parents.
Not only do they learn language,
but they also learn culture in the class.
So it's a very good class for them.
And they also say that this class helps them to be--
to understand their parents better,
to find topics to discuss.