Entry 2: Interview With......
While conducting my interview with Jennifer, who is a native Spanish speaker, I realize there were a few things that I was not aware of. As a child, Jennifer faced a difficult time picking up the language. Around the second grade, she began to start learning the English language. Since her household only spoke English, Jennifer found it difficult to fully grasp the language since her family only spoke Spanish at home. Jennifer felt that if she had the opportunity to practice the language at home and at school, her educational journey would have went more smoothly. She also mentioned the severity of maintain her Spanish language meant the preserving of her heritage and ethnicity. According to Lourdes Ortega, “..Newcomers to their societies allegedly refuse to learn the language of the majority and persist in settling for rudimentary survival language skills only, even after decades of living in their new country.” (Ortega, 2011 Pg. 8). As Jennifer familiarize herself with the English language as a child, I asked her if any of the knowledge learn from the Spanish language aided into English. Her response was that it didn’t. Since she had been surrounded by her mother tongue most of her life, many of the grammar structure of the words did not relocate. “It soon became clear that neither the linguistic knowledge nor the linguistic behavior of L2 learners was slavishly determined by externally cataloged L1–L2 differences. It soon became apparent that sometimes certain L1–L2 similarities do not seem to help. Let us look at the area of negation to illustrate this ...” (Ortega 2011, Pg.32). Since Jennifer would like to be a future educator, taking into account her personal experience, she wants to set a better example for her students. By allowing students to learn in a more encouraging environment, and show patience toward the students, Jennifer wants to have assistance from an aid. She would also like to implement ways for students to better understand the curriculum and gain confidence. Ortega references teachers approaches and mentions that they debate on two approaches to teaching; whether sticking strictly to grammar and vocabulary or incorporate the natural language meaning-making processes.(Ortega, 2011 Pg. 8). With Jennifer’s perspective, I now can better understand the ways that ELL’s encounter the English language, and how to better their knowledge.
To learn more about Jennifer's story,click here!
Ortega, Lourdes. Second Language Acquisition. London: Routledge, 2011 Print
Celester,
ReplyDeleteGreat video and wonderful interview. What I actually loved the most was I found your interview to be very interesting and similar to my person. Though each of our interviewee’s spoke different languages (mines Yoruba and yours Spanish) I think that the way they began and struggled says a lot. Alike Jennifer, my interviewee also struggled a lot when he first arrived to the United States and didn’t like speaking in front of loud crowds due to his accent. He felt it took a lot of extra work and patience for him to grasp the language when he began public school coming from Nigeria where he never went to school. I like how you mentioned Jennifer house, had a lot to do with the way she learned and played a huge part in why she struggled. According to Ortega, “age-related differences exist in how a skill or ability is learned.” Due to the fact Jennifer spoke English at school and Spanish at home, I can easily see why she had a hard time. The fact that she continued to work at it and learn English is admirable to say the least. Now that Jennifer speaks both English and Spanish how do you think she can help others trying to learn English as a second language?
Ortega, Lourdes. Second Language Acquisition. London: Routledge, 2011. Print
Jolie,
DeleteThank you for viewing my interview. I think since Jennifer has first-hand experience with English as a Second Language, she'll be able to connect with others and relate to the issues they may face with learning a new language. She mentions that her biggest struggle was the grammar of the English language and syntax of various words. With that, she avoided speaking out in class and refrained from answers questions. According to Ortega, "avoidance may delay their L2 development of the given area being avoided". Instead, I think she'll encourage mistake being made so others can learn from them and obtain a better comprehension of the language.
Ortega, Lourdes. Second Language Acquisition. London: Routledge, 2011. Print
Nice interview ! Jennifer mentioned that there were no real similarities with knowledge or content between English and Spanish. I think that this had a major impact on the rate at which she learned English. According to Ortega(2013), L1-L2 differences account for the pace or rate at which certain morphosyntactic structures will be learned by different L1 groups (pg. 34). Being that she could not find that positive transfer between the two languages, it probably hindered her ability to learn English at a successful rate(on top of other factors as well). I know you kind of touched on this in your reflection, in a different light do you think these differences had an impact on the rate in which she learned English?
ReplyDeleteHi Aundria, thanks for watching my interview. I do think that the impact on the rate in which Jennifer learned her L2 language played a big role. Something that I didn’t mention in the interview was that Jennifer missed several days of school and due to this it was even harder to learn the language. With absences acumilating, Jennifer found herself falling behind, which later lead to her repeating the second grade. Researchers found tha student with “moderately associated with course grades, suggesting that high-anxiety students expect and do indeed receive lower grades in their foreign language courses than do low-anxiety students.(pg. 201) I think that with Jennifer setback, it affected her emotionally during that time period and contributed to her learning of the language. Do you think emotions or motivation play a factor learning a language?
DeleteYes, I definitely believe emotions play a factor in learning a language. whether it is good or bad emotions. As future educators I believe we need to listen carefully to them to learn more about their emotional processes in learning. We should listen to clues about student's emotions about learning for teachable moments to intervene and support learning. Some see emotions as inferior to cognition , but we should be cautious and plan for student's to talk about their feelings about learning language.
DeleteHi Celester! I agree with Jennifer that as a teacher, you should provide an encouraging environment and have patience toward students who are learning a new language. With English learners, teachers need to be able to help students gain confidence in their speaking abilities and feel comfortable in the classroom. I believe that being an ELL yourself can help you in understanding what your students are going through.
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DeleteHi Jennie! I totally agree that patience is everything. Some teachers are caught up in teaching the curriculum or objective and disregard the level of comprehension of the student. I think that teachers who are bilingual or multilingual are great because they able to understand to perspective of learning from a student who’s is an ELL. Our textbook mentions that “foreign language anxiety and communicative self-confidence are also considered key in predicting motivation“.(Ortega, Pg 173) As future educators, if we take time and connect with our students one-on-one, then we can create a rapport with the child to where they’re encouraged. With out this, it makes it very difficult for the child to be a recipient of learning a new language and difficult for the teacher who is trying to teach them in the best was possible.
DeleteOrtega, Lourdes. Second Language Acquisition. London: Routledge, 2011. Print