Hello all! I had so much fun interviewing my mom's
cousin, Denise Rodriguez, who has been an ESL teacher for several years now.
She has taught all elementary grades from first grade to fifth grade in a few
districts in San Antonio, Texas. Sadly, since she lives a few hours away, and
we are both very busy women, we could not meet up in person. So, I hope
everyone can hear our conversation loud and clear. However, I still had lots of
fun talking to her and connecting what we talk about in this class with her experiences.
First of all, her experiences actually don’t quite mirror the research that we
have discussed about in this class so far. For example, when talking to Denise
about her English Language Learners’ motivation to learn English, she says that
their motivation has never been an issue for her and her students. She claims
that all of her students have been highly motivated and that they are willing
to put in the time and effort to learn English. As mentioned by Ortega (2013), this
might be because her students’ are most likely interested in learning a second
language in order to become closer to their L2 community (p. 170). For first
through fifth graders, they might have multiple reasons, or orientations, for
learning English. These might consist of integrating themselves to become more
like the members of their L2 community and/or to strengthen their friendships
with their peers who speak their L2 (Ortega, 2013, p. 173). Denise also talks
about how age does not really play a role in Second Language Acquisition, except
for the fact that younger learners are indeed sponges to new languages. This is
because in her experience, as long as English Language Learners are exposed to
meaningful and supportive instruction, they will be motivated and encouraged to
be successful. According to Ortega (2013), a second language learner may be an
exception to the pattern of young learners experiencing easier acquisition
because they, “appear to be related to unusually high motivation and high
quality of instruction,” (p. 29). I hope you enjoy my video as much as I did
making it! (:
Sunday, March 4, 2018
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 (:
Friday, January 26, 2018
Entry #1: Self Introduction
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