Two in One • 二合一

Hello, my name is Halden Levin, and you are listening to Little Dragon’s Journey. 你好！我叫李靜辰，你正在聽小龍的旅程。

Transition Music（音樂）

This is a blog post from Little Dragon’s Journey:

Two in One

“The journey has already begun before stepping foot in China! Today was the day of my first OPI and the first time my host family contacted me :). Just in case you’re wondering, as I assume you are, OPI stands for The Oral Proficiency Interview, which is facilitated by Language Testing International. All NSLI-Y participants who have studied their chosen language prior must have this interview no matter have amazing or how poor their language-speaking skills are. It serves as a pre-test and will later serve as a determination of how much one learns during their NSLI-Y program. I scheduled my OPI for June 1st at 6:00 pm, so I wasn’t expecting a call until… well… six o’clock. However, I kept on getting calls from some number in Tampa, Florida from 5:00 to 5:30. Since I didn’t know who was calling, and I wasn’t expecting a call at that time, I didn’t pick up.

Around 5:40 pm I got another call, the fourth call in a span of an hour, but this time it was from Yonkers, NY, so I picked it up, thinking it may be a NSLI-Y related call. I was immediately greeted by a woman speaking English with a clear Chinese accent. After my uncertain greeting, she asked me if I was ready for my OPI. At the time I was in the car and in the process of eating about a pound of carrots, so as a matter of fact, I was not ready.

Despite my situation, I said why not go for it because waiting twenty minutes probably wouldn't have had made me feel much more prepared. With my limited Chinese speaking and listening skills, I survived a twenty to twenty-five-minute conversation in Chinese. The first part of the interview was fairly conversational: what is my name, what do I like to do, what is my favorite color, how many people are in my family, etc. The second part was a role-play activity in which I was an English tutor for Chinese students, and I was talking to a mother who was considering my tutoring services for her son. After the role-play activity, she asked me a few more questions, and the interview ended.

I didn’t feel like I did absolutely horribly... The interview was actually kinda fun. I don’t often speak to people in Chinese because my parents don’t speak Chinese, no one speaks Chinese at my school, and I have yet to find a Chinese speaker in my little town in North Carolina. The score you get on the OPI is anywhere from Novice Low to Distinguished. I felt like I scored Novice Mid at best, but at least I had a good time. Reflecting on my first Chinese OPI, I believe that I could best improve my score on the OPI by speaking more, asking the interviewer more questions, and improving my tones. I’ve heard for the OPI that speaking as much as you can in the given language is a great way to improve your score because more speaking tends to demonstrate a better understanding of that language and a higher level of language proficiency.

In addition to my OPI experience, my host family contacted me for the first time! It was a simple email of greeting, but I thoroughly appreciate the welcoming vibe and the shiny heart.”

Ah… OPIs. The first time I took an OPI, I actually ended up doing much better than I expected; I thought for sure that I scored somewhere in the novice range, but I ended up earning an Intermediate Low ranking (for more on the OPI scoring system, check out the link above). By the end of the program, I scored Intermediate High, which was definitely a major improvement. My OPI experience this year was much better than back in 2018; I took the call out on our porch and felt moderately relaxed. Recently, I took another practice OPI with one of my high school Chinese teachers.

I was involved in a lot of cool projects during September and October. On October 13, I met with (by met I mean talked on the phone) Hu Laoshi 胡老師, my first NCSSM Chinese teacher, to help her train to administer OPIs, which are oral language exams administered by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). The format of OPIs can best be described as an interview with questions, increasing in difficulty, asked during the first part and typically a role play activity, such as your interviewer is a waiter/waitress and you are a customer who forgot your wallet and you have to navigate that situation. NSLI-Y students are required to take one at the beginning and one at the end of their program to quantify language improvement. Even though my OPI with Hu Laoshi was only for practice, I still was a little nervous, but it was great having the opportunity to practice taking the OPI and reconnecting with Hu Laoshi. When I took the OPI at the beginning of the NSLI-Y program I’m currently a part of, I earned Intermediate High, and Hu Laoshi thought I was at Advanced Low, so I think all the Chinese studying I’m doing right now is paying off. Hu Laoshi gave me some great advice on improving my Chinese vocabulary and really honing in on my descriptive skills.

Then, around the same time, I developed a video for Li Laoshi 李老師, my second NCSSM Chinese teacher, to share with her students and students from Hangzhou 杭州 who typically come to our school for a linguistic/cultural exchange every year. You can check out the video on my blog site, and pretty much I talked about my experience with learning Chinese, some tips, and why learning languages is important. Even though international travel and even domestic travel is difficult right now, we should still continue to connect and engage with people across the globe and even from different perspectives and backgrounds within our local communities. Greater acceptance and understanding of one another isn’t the perfect solution to all the problems in this world, but it’s certainly important.

And then… On October 20, I helped out with NSLI-Y outreach at NCSSM. Since I became a student at NCSSM, I have helped out with NSLI-Y outreach. My junior year, I was a guest speaker on a NSLI-Y alumni panel, and my senior year, I helped organize the presentation and event and was the MC. This year, Ms. Smith, a Spanish teacher at NCSSM, reached out to me and asked if I would be willing to help organize the NSLI-Y outreach event again this year. I said yes, of course, and revised the PowerPoint from last year, reached out to NCSSM NSLI-Y alumni, and served as the MC again during the event. Every year, there are typically at least a few NCSSM students engaging in NSLI-Y because the Humanities Department does a wonderful job sharing information about NSLI-Y and other study abroad opportunities. When I discovered NSLI-Y in 2016/2017, it was truly a matter of luck; my original high school, Pinecrest High School, did not share information about NSLI-Y and other similar programs. I think it’s incredibly important that students, especially students who are less represented in NSLI-Y and similar programs, know that these equitable study abroad programs exist.

Finally, on October 26, I was a panelist for the “Intercultural Communication Panel” hosted by NSLI-Y Interactive. Alexander, one of the members of the iEARN NSLI-Y Team, reached out to ask if I was available and interested in helping out. I, along with two other NSLI-Y, shared a little bit about our NSLI-Y experiences and salient intercultural interactions during our time abroad. I was grateful to be a part of the panel and share my experience learning about how the disability community is supported in China, but I really would have liked to have seen a few other alumni from different backgrounds, especially other females and females of color. I tried to answer one question asked by a black individual about what sorts of situations POCs may encounter abroad and what support is available to them, and I honestly felt a bit embarrassed trying to answer the question because, although I consider myself a pretty empathetic individual, I cannot truly speak to what it’s like to be a black man or woman in a foreign environment. I can truly only speak authentically to my own experiences.

Transition Music（音樂）

Please visit haldenlevin.wixsite.com/littledragonjourney to access the transcript of this episode, and know you are always welcome to contact me through my website, email, or social media. Thank you for joining Little Dragon’s Journey. 謝謝你們參加小龍的旅程。拜拜！