Hi welcome back to my second blog! I decided to
interview a student teacher in third grade and her journey of learning English
and a little bit about how her mom learned English. She began the interview with
how she learned English at the age of 5. I asked her what part of the language
was hard for her to understand as she was learning English and she told me that
the comprehension was hard for her to understand. She would read a passage
three times until she would understand it and she would still have trouble even
after reading it. Even now as an adult she has to read things several times
before she gets a clear understanding of what the passage is asking. I find that
interesting because Ortega states “In many parts of the globe, most children
grow up speaking two or more languages simultaneously” (Ortega, 2013, 4) and she
had trouble understanding the second language when most children pick it up
easily. I was like that when I was learning Spanish when I was five, I had to
spend four years in ESL classes because I could not grasp the English language
easily. I had trouble with the fluency piece of English, I would get the sounds
and letters mixed up and I did not understand the sentence structure very well.
When we were talking about her mom she said that her mom learned English at the
age of twenty five and she learned that by living in the United States and
listening to people around her. I like that method better because you understand
the language and it is more authentic.
Ortega, L. (2013). Understanding second language acquisition. Routledge.
https://youtu.be/NfjHdmEZ5Oo
Hi Laura,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your video! Your friend states that the most challenging part of learning English was while she was reading trying to comprehend what the text was saying. I will have to agree with her if you do not know the vocabulary; it is hard to move on to the writing part. I was also an ELL and I know that when I was taking my Math state test, I was able to finish fast because reading was not super essential, but when I had to take any other test, I was very nervous and would take me longer to complete. Your friend also stated that her mom learned English through native speakers and her surroundings; making her a naturalistic learner. (pg 6).
References:
Ortega, L. (2013). Understanding second language acquisition. Routledge.
Hi Karla! Thanks for watching my video! I completely agree with you, if you're learning a brand new language and do not have a great grasp on the vocabulary learning to write will not be easy. I find it interesting that other children around the globe can learn a new language however when kids are learning it here it hard to grasp the language. According to Ortega, "In many parts of the globe, most children grow up speaking two or more languages simultaneously” (Ortega, 2014, 4), I wonder if it is because English is harder to learn.
DeleteOrtega, L. (2013). Understanding second language acquisition. Routledge.
Hi Laura,
DeleteI do not think that one language is harder to learn that other languages, that makes it harder to learn a specific language. Everyone has different learning styles, or other reasons why they have a difficult time learning a language and that might cause them to have more difficulty acquiring language. Rowland states that "there are also individual differences between children acquiring the same language; some children are faster and others are slower." (pg4) I think that writing was the most difficult to learn because there is a lot of words that have different or the same meanings, and as a novice to the language one is not sure if you are using it appropriately or not. But I think everyone struggles differently when learning English.
Reference:
Rowland, Caroline. (2014). Understanding Child Language Acquisition. Routledge. London and New York.
Hello Laura, it is nice to meet you. Thank you for sharing your video. It is nice to hear about the struggles of an ESL during childhood, from their perspective as an adult now. Not only that, but your interviewee is also a student teacher just like us. So this video is really relatable to us. During the interview, your interviewee mentions how she found it easier to learn English as a child, rather than as an adult. Ortega mentions how “children acquiring their first language complete the feat within a biological window of four to six years of age”(Ortega, pg.12).Your interviewee spent the first five years of her life learning Spanish before she learned to speak English, which is why she felt that she was still struggling with English. Since Spanish is her dominate language. I hope that you and your interviewee will be able to continue to build your L2 skills.
ReplyDeleteOrtega, L. (2013). Understanding second language acquisition. Routledge.
Hello Selena,
DeleteYes, it is exciting that the interviewee is a student teacher like us. As many bilingual speakers we tend to make one language more dominant than the other. In this case she tends to make the English language dominant since she uses it at work and school. According to Gass and Selinker (2013), “Heritage language learners have knowledge of two languages (the home language and the language of the environment/ school), and they are usually dominant in the second language” (p. 23).
Gass, S., & Selinker, L. (2008). Second language acquisition: An introductory course. New York: Routledge.
Hey Laura I enjoyed watching your video! I do agree with you and Karla, vocabulary is so crucial when learning any language. Honestly, English is extremely tricky because of its context. I could agree with your question about English maybe being a harder language to learn or grasp. I think that is why as a teacher we must be willing to go the extra mile for ELL students. We have once been in those shoes and it’s our chance to understand students and their frustrations when acquiring a new language.
ReplyDeleteHello Shelly,
DeleteI agree with you that English is such a hard and tricky language to understand and comprehend. It has a lot of rules especially phonics to grasp. Laura’s student teacher interviewee visual cues helped her understand different contexts. Some students need visual and auditory in order to understand. According to Ortega (2013), “refers to the fluent ability to access spelling cues and automatically integrate them to identify words” (p. 153).
Ortega, L. (2013). Understanding second language acquisition. Routledge.
Hello Laura,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your video of your friend. I totally agree with her in the concept that now her English language is her dominant language. Even though in my situation is different since my first language was English but my home language is Spanish. It was always difficult to learn Spanish and grasp the reading and writing of it. According to Ortega, "for most, one language is dominant, and this is often the community language rather than the home language" (Ortega, 2013). But hopefully over time she continues to learn it and talk to her grandparents without being shy about it.
Ortega, L. (2013). Understanding second language acquisition. Routledge.