Interview | UM student Lisandra Wagan Fesalbon: ‘Encouragement needed for more students to speak English’

Lisandra Wagan Fesalbon

University of Macau student Lisandra Wagan Fesalbon outperformed the other 100,000 contestants at the “21st Century Coca-Cola Cup” National English Speaking Competition, taking the top honor. Born in Macau in 1995 to Filipino parents, Lisandra started learning English at an early age by watching American cartoons. Growing up, she developed an interest for reading books and the news mostly in English, although she’s also fluent in Cantonese and Tagalog. The student has noticed a change in young people’s English proficiency. Yet, in an interview with The Times, she acknowledged that teachers’ encouragement could have a positive impact on students’ ability to learn and improve their English language skills.

Macau Daily Times (MDT) – You recently won an English public speaking competition in China. What’s the meaning of this award?
Lisandra Fesalbon (LF) – It’s really great because it’s a big competition and I didn’t know that prior to joining it. When I joined it was even a bigger deal because I found out – when I broke through semi-finals – that the last person [from Macau] to break through to the semi-finals did so eight or nine years ago. After winning in the final it was like ‘wow I am coming home with an honor to the University of Macau, so it was a great experience.

MDT – Macau is now often portrayed as an international city. However, there are still many young students who do not speak English. Do you think it is somehow changing?
LF – Definitely. I think it’s changing because more people are trying to learn English; if not English then Mandarin, which is also a widely known and spoken language in the world. I think more students are learning English, especially now that we have a new campus and are inviting people from around the world to teach here, and more exchange students come here. The exchange experiences we have are growing so there’s definitely more people speaking English.

MDT – What do you think is lacking for more people and students in Macau to speak English? Should the government encourage it more?
LF – What’s lacking is really the encouragement, I suppose. Because a lot of the time people in Macau are afraid to speak English as maybe they’re scared of not saying things right. The encouragement should not come from the government but actually from the teachers themselves within the schools. That way youth would not be afraid of speaking English.

MDT – You mentioned the new campus and new teachers being invited here. Did it make a big difference in student’s ability to speak English over the past years?
LF – Actually I find that people are speaking Mandarin more. On the other hand, a lot of mainland students don’t speak Cantonese and some local students’ Mandarin is not as good as theirs. So sometimes the only language that they can actually communicate in is English.

MDT – In your case, what was the secret? How did you become fluent in English?
LF – Basically I was born here and growing up I watched a lot of television and it was usually English cartoons like Blue’s Clues and Sesame Street, and those are all American based cartoons and they’re all in English. So I learned that way. I also read a lot of books, from when I was in primary school up until now. I read everyday. I also read newspapers in English.
MDT – Did your family background also influence you to learn foreign languages?
LF – My parents are from the Philippines and they moved here about 25 years ago. But I was born here. Probably yes [it influenced me]. Growing up I had to learn three different languages. In school, I needed to learn Cantonese and at home my parents speak Filipino (Tagalog), my mother tongue. I read news in English. The majority of the time I speak English because it’s the language I am most familiar with.

MDT – What interested you the most in learning English in particular?
LF – A lot of international information is in English, the news or even pop culture, like music or movies. It’s mostly from America and that’s probably what drew me to think ‘hey English is cool, English is fun,’ because you’re exposed to that type of background.

MDT – What drove you to join UM’s public speaking team?
LF – Public speaking and speech actually started from when I was a young girl because in Macau we have these poetry competitions, so I joined those poetry-speaking competitions when I was young, and then when I grew up I joined speaking competitions because I did well on the poetry ones. Coming to UM I tried debate first.
I joined the public speaking team just last year. I met the coach in a Macau regional competition and I didn’t know that our school actually had a team. I was in the debate team the year before but I moved to the speech team because I feel like that’s what I would like to focus on more.

Engaging politics

Lisandra Wagon Fesalbon, 19, is majoring in International Relations and Government and Public Administration at the University of Macau. “I chose this degree because I wanted to understand politics. Throughout my education background through high school I didn’t learn much about politics and I wanted to have a deeper understanding of this part of the world,” she told The Times.