Sunday, February 11, 2018
Entry #2: Interview with Albagir!
Hello and welcome back to my blog for entry #2! I really enjoyed the opportunity to interview my good friend
from high school, Albagir Mohamed Elmahdi Elmalik. His first language is Arabic
and he started to formally learn English when he was around four years of age
when he started school in Sudan. He moved to the Unites States when he was
around six years of age, which is when he started to learn even more English informally
while in school. Albagir says he did not
consider himself completely fluent in English until he was 10 years old, but
that it was very easy to learn English as a second language while he was young.
According to Ortega (2009), "learners who began acquiring the L2 before a
certain age, which these studies locate to be around puberty, will tend to
exhibit intuitions that are very close to those of native speakers of that
language" (p. 19). Albagir was very fortunate because he learned English so
young before puberty, which made it easy for his brain to act like a sponge,
absorbing English like it was nothing. Therefore, he was engulfed in the
culture of Houston, Texas so young that he may seem as if his native tongue may
be English. Furthermore, because Albagir mentions that English was so easy to
absorb as a child, this must mean that in his case, he was not bothered by any
cross-linguistic influence or interference. Ortega (2009) also mentions that, “crosslinguistic
influences can have positive as well as negative consequences for L2 learning”
(p. 31). So, in Albagir’s case, he was blessed with an easy and positive transition
into the United States from Sudan. I hope you enjoy our video! Leave any comments below (:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Albagir seem like such a fun guy to interview. He was very honest, and it was interesting to see his perspective of different languages. Ortega states that “it was initially hypothesized that differences between the L1 and the L2 were responsible for the L2 difficulties experienced by specific learner groups who shared a same L1.” (Ortega, 2009, pg. 32). However, Albagir had a counter approach. He seemed to think that English was much easier to learn even though it lacked similarities to Arabic. I wonder if he found any similarities in the other two languages he is trying to learn and if they that is a reason they are harder to learn.
ReplyDeleteHey Cristina, thank you for your comment! It was definitely a fun interview. And yes, I agree with what you stated before. Albagir found learning English to be easy for him. According to Ortega (2009), cross-linguistic influences can either have a positive or a negative impact when learning a second language (p. 31). In Albagir's case, he learned English with ease and experienced the positive side of language transfer, despite Arabic's many differences. Lastly, to answer your question, Albagir has been learning Spanish as well as Hungarian and also claims that there are very few similarities.
DeleteHey Haley,
DeleteI am so fascinated how Albagir is trying to not learn not just one language but two! so impressed. Especially since both lack similarities. Although they lack theses similarities I am glad he has had a positive cross linguistic experience. Had it been negative he might have never tried to learn another language or even worse given up on learning English. So interesting to hear others experience.
Hi Haley! It seems like Albagir agreed with this idea of critical age mentioned in our textbook (Ortega, 2013, p. 12). He mentioned this idea that younger children are like a sponge and have an easier time learning this language which directly relates to this critical age ideal. Albagir mentioned that he sometimes blends the languages which made me think of the crosslingusitc issues that many ESL learners face (Ortega, 2013, p. 12). Alabagir also mentioned some of the differences of learning English in Sudan and in the United States. It seems that in the United States he was pushed towards having more naturalistic experiences due to the fact that he had to communicate with friends daily in English (Ortega, 2013, p. 60). He also mentioned a specific instance of buying a candy bar and the langusitic barriers he faced in that moment where he had to adapt his language.
ReplyDeleteOrtega, Lourdes. Second Language Acquisition. London: Routledge, 2013. Print.
Hey Tara, thank you for your comment! Yes, I definitely agree with what you mentioned above. I found a lot of concepts from our textbook that match Albagir's acquisition story almost perfectly. Albagir started to learn English when he was around 4 years old, which is within a good window in order to absorb a second language like a sponge. Ortega (2009) mentions in our text that "learners who began acquiring the L2 before a certain age, which these studies locate to be around puberty, will tend to exhibit intuitions that are very close to those of native speakers of that language" (p. 19). Lastly, he was learning English informally once he moved to the states, because he needed to communicate with his peers, teachers, etc. Second Language Learners nowadays learn mainly from interacting orally with their peers (Ortega, 2009, p. 60).
DeleteHi Haley!
ReplyDeleteYour interview was so much fun to watch, Albagir seemed so open and honest about his SLA experience. Albagir mentioned many interesting things he experienced growing up and until this day such as mixing up languages now which according to (Rowland, 2014) language mixing is pretty common and it occurs with adults too. He also mentioned preferring the English language rather than his native language. He also related a younger child’s mind to a sponge which I definitely agree with, which I believe might have helped him with learning English when he arrived to the US at 6 years old. According to Ortega, “most learners who begin acquiring the L2 before a certain age, typically before puberty, will develop levels of morphosyntactic and phonological competence that are very close to those of native speakers of that language” (Ortega, pg.28) which could explain his proficiency in English.
Hey Diana, thank you for your comment! I did really enjoy my interview with Albagir. He had a lot of interesting things to say about his experience learning English as a second language, a lot of which were concepts that we have been learning in this class so far. Also, when Albagir explained that a child's mind is like a sponge, I definitely agreed as well. When children learn a second language before or around puberty, this helps their mind to soak in the new content. This in turn helps them to act and behave like they are a native speaker of that language themselves (Ortega, 2009, p. 19).
Delete