Undergraduate Student Series: an Interview with David Chang

Felicia Lee

David Chang is a returning undergraduate student who is currently enrolled in the Bachelor of Arts and is looking to major in languages and linguistics. David is also a practising dentist specialising in Periodontics. David loves learning new languages and hitting the gym.

Felicia spoke to David about his motivations of majoring in languages and linguistics on top of his professional commitment as a dentist, and his passion in acquiring multiple languages. 

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Hi David, thank you for doing this interview with me. To start off, could you just tell us more about yourself, what languages can you speak, and which year you’re in?

Okay, I’m a first year Bachelor of Arts majoring in linguistics, but this is my 10th year studying at the tertiary level. I’ve done five years of Bachelor of Dental Science then I spent two years studying for the fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Dental Surgeons. Subsequently, I spent three years doing a Doctor of Clinical Dentistry to specialise in Periodontics. Then I did one and a half years of forensic medicine. Right now, I’m working three days at a dental clinic, and I also teach classes at the gym.

As for my language background, I am technically a native Mandarin speaker because I was born in Taiwan. My family moved to Brisbane when I was six, so I learnt English as a second language. I am conversational in Italian and Japanese. I learnt German in high school, but it’s pretty much replaced by Italian now. I would like to learn other languages too.

It seems that you can speak a number of languages. What sparked off the love for languages?

I think of how language learning was like in my family when I was growing up. Because I was born in Taiwan, there’s a big Japanese influence in Taiwan, so my grandparents can speak Japanese and Taiwanese.

For example, in Taiwan, we always use the word “ringo” for apple, which is the also the Japanese word for apple as well. And I only realized that it was “pongo” in Taiwanese when one time my friend’s mum was offering me an apple and used the word. And then I turned to my mum and asked her, “What’s ‘pongo’? Isn’t apple ‘ringo’?”

I think at home, we use a lot of Japanese words just with my grandparents because my grandma, my dad’s mum, was a huge part of my childhood and she was probably the most Japanese out of all of my grandparents. I had a lot of Japanese influence in my childhood, so that sort of mixed use of language was very evident.

Then when I was attending university, I was an interstate student, so in the first year, it was kind of hard to make friends. I made a lot of friends with international students and a lot of my friends were from Malaysia and Singapore, so the concept of Singlish or Manglish was so easy for me to grasp. And I just was like, “Oh, this is kind of cool.” Looking back on my experiences, I feel that language is not just a means for communication, but also connecting people as well.  

I started learning Italian about four years ago and I think at that point I was in my last year of career training, and I just was a little fed up with everything. I thought I just needed to exercise a different part of my brain than just the science side of my brain. You know, I like traveling as well, but I like traveling to countries where I feel like I can somewhat communicate, and I don’t really like traveling like a typical tourist. I like experiencing life a little like locals would, so I find that if I travelled to countries that I can’t speak the language, it’s not necessarily the kind of experience that I want.

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You’re practising as a dentist right now, and you’re taking up a BA majoring in Linguistics full time. What motivated you to get into linguistics since you’re already cleaning teeth professionally?

I find it interesting comparing between the different languages and see seeing how these languages work and understanding the nuances between languages. I didn’t know there was a field that described this kind of knowledge; I think I only became more aware of it because my friend’s dad is a linguistics professor at the University of Queensland, and I spoke to him about it. I know that it’s quite a broad field with different sub-fields and I guess I’m figuring out what I enjoy.

And what do you enjoy most about the classes that you have?

I think just learning about things that I had thought about like, like the third culture kids in Intercultural Communication. I’ve grown up feeling the way that these third culture kids did, but just learning about it was like, “Oh, it’s not just me that feels it. It’s an actual phenomenon!”

And you know, like the use of address terms, what the factors influence its use, that’s also something that I’ve thought about but just haven’t really thought about it in such a formative way. So that’s what I enjoy because these are things that I’ve been interested in and now I’m learning everything about it in a didactic way.

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It’s also interesting that you’re returning as a mature student. Tell me how you feel about that!

Coming from a background in science and now switching over to arts, I think in Bachelor of Arts, there’s a big focus on critical thinking. That’s not something that is taught in health science. When research is done in health science, people are searching for the p value, and people may take it as face value. But statistics can be manipulated too, it depends on how you analyse the data. I think there’s a lot of problem with research nowadays. There’s just a lot of just pumping out research for the sake of research, and just because it’s published, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s foolproof.

For instance, one has to really understand the nuances in research and this takes a lot of critical thinking. This isn’t even a skill that was really taught when I was doing specialty training. It’s just something you have to develop, and you have to be able to, too. Additionally, taking subjects in the Faculty of Arts, they really push you to critically think about issues. Because I’m coming back as a mature student and I’ve already done something which has challenged me like that, it’s kind of like the second time I’m doing it, it just makes a bit more sense. Therefore, I know a lot of my classmates would find it tough because critical thinking isn’t something that you can just develop over the next few weeks. It develops, I guess, across the course of, say a three-year program. It gets easier because you’re exercising that muscle in that sense. I feel that first year BA students will often struggle with that at first, but will develop that skill in time to come.

That’s good to know and I think that’s really valuable advice coming from someone who has experienced tertiary education before. Well, I hope that you continue to enjoy the rest of your BA journey and discover your interests in linguistics! Thank you for chatting with me, David!

Thank you, Felicia.