24 students enrolled in an interpreting course at an urban public university in the US completed a language history questionnaire including a narrative on their emotional experience as language brokers. Most students in the present study received their education in English and only took some Spanish language classes (either for L2 learners or heritage speakers). We assume that this is the case with our population and that it is likely that although students were Spanish-dominant in their early years, they became English-dominant upon entering elementary school. Preliminary data from this project shows that students enrolled in interpretation courses currently use English significantly more at work, school, and with friends, while English and Spanish are used roughly at the same rate at home.
T-test results with Bonferroni correction of the probability of English and Spanish use per context. The line inside the box represents the median, the box depicts the interquartile range, and the whiskers represent the range of values of language use for each context.