Kiana Kishiyama, Plurilingual Lab member, remembers feeling scared when, at the start of her first undergraduate class in beginner鈥檚 Mandarin, her teacher looked at her and said, 鈥淵ou need to speak to me after class.鈥�
鈥淎nd I鈥檓 like, what, I鈥檓 in trouble already?鈥�
It turned out that the teacher believed that Kishiyama, who was adopted from China by a Canadian couple, was just being modest about her language skills.
After hearing Kishiyama speak a single phrase in Mandarin, the teacher quickly changed her mind.
鈥淚t was like I had to prove my lack of language proficiency. I was a bit irked,鈥� said Kishiyama, with a laugh.
Adoptee identity and language of origin
This was just one of the experiences that led Kishiyama, one of the two 9I制作厂免费 finalists in the 2025聽, toward a master鈥檚 program in Second Language Education at 9I制作厂免费. Her research, supervised by Dr. Angelica Galante, looks at how the process of learning their languages of origin can play into the construction of a sense of identity for international adoptees. SSHRC stands for Social Science and Humanities Research Council, a federally funded body.
鈥淲hat some of the of the participants in my study mentioned is that learning their language of origin has helped them imagine a self that they could have been,鈥� said Kishiyama, who took classes in both Japanese and Mandarin as a child (Her adoptive father is of Japanese ancestry).
鈥淚t鈥檚 like, they鈥檙e speaking a language that they could have actually grown up speaking and learning about a culture that they could have grown up in, the culture of birth family members they are biologically connected to. I know that some people have thought about it as a sort of healing process.鈥�
The next step for Kishiyama will be to present her research story live at the 聽conference in Fredericton, N.B. on June 13, 2025. Each of the 25 finalists will be judged on their live storytelling skills and could win an additional $1,000. Each finalist has already won $3,000.
鈥淓ven if I don鈥檛 get into this award, it doesn鈥檛 matter because it will still have been valuable for me to learn to express my ideas in a video format in a way that鈥檚 understandable to the general public. I鈥檓 learning so much,鈥� said Kishiyama.
Watch Kishiyama's SSHRC's Storytellers submission:
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