Bilingual Interview
For my second entry, I asked my friend if I could interview her. She was born in Texas and she grew up with Spanish as her first language. In her household, her mother spoke only Spanish, while her siblings were bilingual. As stated in the video, she did not begin to learn English until she was in Kindergarten, making her a successive early bilingual. She found it was easy for her to learn English while she was younger which reflects the critical and sensitive period theory (Ortega, 2013). While she is currently fluent in English, she did have some trouble with keeping both languages since she was not allowed to speak Spanish within the classroom. Past the age of four, she began to hear more English over Spanish. Her siblings would help her learn English at home and she would learn English from her teachers when they took her out of the classroom. Since she heard more English, her vocabulary became English dominate (Rowland, 2015). Although she found it easy to learn English, she was slow to become fluent enough to leave the ESL program. She was introduced to English early but she did not have a wide variety of words to fill the gap between her and other monolingual students, which demonstrates why it took her time to leave the ESL program (Rowland, 2015). As she grew confident in the language, she gained friends and expanded her vocabulary in English because her friends only knew how to speak English.
Ortega, L. (2013). Understanding second language acquisition. Routledge.
Rowland, C. (2014). Understanding child language acquisition. Routledge.
Hey there, Veronica! I found what your friend had to say about learning a second language to be very interesting. Throughout the interview she kept commenting that being younger is very crucial in learning a second language. Ortega does mention that children have a better chance in learning a new language in the long run, but it is a common misconception that learning a new language “would be worse for an adult.” In fact, Ortega states in her book that “in terms of L2 learning rate, adults and older children enjoy an initial advantage over young children that may last over up to one year, sometimes up to three years” (Ortega, 2013, p. 28). Nonetheless, your friend is correct that the overall learning process for a new language would be more efficient at an early age. This deals with the fact that “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, 2013, p. 28), meaning that learning a language at a much younger age can help in perfecting a language. Overall, it was very interesting to see your friends point of view in how she learned her second language!
ReplyDeleteReferences:
Ortega, L. (2013). Understanding second language acquisition. Routledge.
Hi Alexander! I think its interesting how most people assume it's better to learn a second language as children without knowing the research put into SLA. Before this course, I assumed the same and as you know my friend also believes learning younger is best. Krashen, Long, and Scarcela found adults have an edge in the beginning but learning younger is better in the end (Ortega, 2013). In my friend's case, it seems to be true because she felt she learned English better than she would have as an adult.
DeleteOrtega, L. (2013). Understanding second language acquisition. Routledge.
Hi Veronica! I also agree with both you and Alexander. It is interesting to find research stating that adults can have a better advantage over younger individuals learning a second language. Nevertheless, it can also be possible that the fact that older individuals have that advantage is due to their proficiency levels in L1, which can have either a positive or negative effect on L2 as mentioned by Ortega (2013). This means that even though in the long run it is more efficient to learn a language at a younger age, if an adult is proficient in their mother tongue, then they are able to attain the new language more efficiently than other adults.
DeleteReferences:
Ortega, L. (2013). Understanding second language acquisition. Routledge.
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ReplyDeleteHey Veronica, I see a lot of similarities between your friend and the person I interviewed. My friend was born in Mexico, but started to learned English about the same time as your friend, making them early bilinguals, “someone who has acquired two languages early in childhood”. Gass and Selinker (2008, p. 27). One of the main difference between them two it is that Ale transition from ESL classes to all English classes at a different rate than your friend. A lot of different things could’ve cause this,for example different school districts, since each one sets their ESL standards.
ReplyDeleteReferences:
Gass, S. (2013). Second language acquisition: An introductory course. Routledge.
Hi Karla! I watched your video and I find it encouraging Ale became proficient enough in English to move out of ESL classes after kindergarten. Both Ale and my friend are dominant in English because they use it more in day to day life with school and work (Ortega, 2013). Ortega states in her book order of acquisition may be an influence on other languages (2013). Since they are both dominant in English and learned it second, if they were to go on and learn another language, English would most likely influence how they learn.
DeleteOrtega, L. (2013). Understanding second language acquisition. Routledge.
Interesting interview. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that a lot of people agree with Ortega's critical period range being in and around early childhood (2011). Would you also agree, Veronica, that there are other critical times in a student's life when they can make drastic increases in their skill sets? Or is Ortega's period the most common and practical?
ReplyDeleteMy interviewee also sited friends as a great motivator for learning the language. He said that, by having friends who either spoke English or spoke both English and a second-language, they were able to help him learn English quicker. Do you think we should encourage this behavior, or push students to be motivated by other rewards - either grades, or praise, or a sense of accomplishment - rather than something fueled by social rewards? Personally, I love the idea of using social rewards, as students are heavily dependent on social interactions.
Personally, I believe it all depends on the person. I have a hard time retaining any Spanish I was taught in school but the little bit I learned at home I have no problem recalling. On the other hand, both of my brothers learned Spanish while in school and are fluent in the language. Ortega also says, "age may exert universal influences on the learning of a second language, but context moderates these universal effects and needs to considered carefully" (2013, p. 17).
DeleteI do think we should encourage social rewards to learn English. As you said students rely on social interactions. If the social relationship isn't harmful, there is no reason to discourage learning English from another source.
Ortega, L. (2013). Understanding second language acquisition. Routledge.
Hi Veronica! I found it interesting how your friend remembers not being able to speak Spanish at all at her school. I find this to be quite awful, and I am glad there are better bilingual programs now. Nevertheless, as Ortega mentions "automaticity" being a learning goal for establishing long-term memory of the new language is perhaps one of the reasons why schools back then were more strict about students' language use, since they wanted to students to be proficient in the language (2013). At the end of the day, promoting automaticity is not the best way to approach a second language because it requires much practice that in the long run can cause students to be dominant in one language as it happened to your friend and many others.
ReplyDeleteReferences:
Ortega, L. (2013). Understanding second language acquisition. Routledge.