Entry 4

                 This course helped me understand what individuals experience when learning a second or additional language. As an educator, it is important to understand this process of learning, so you can give the language learner the best experience in your classroom. I was able to understand the motivating factors that the language learner may experience, but also learn about the struggles they may face. ESL teachers must recognize signs of struggle or apprehension, such as foreign language anxiety, and they must also be familiar with positive reinforcement and intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. 

                 I have been able to apply terminology and theory learned in this course to my current experience in pre-service teaching by having my own student to evaluate in my class. I was fortunate to have a student in my classroom, the only ESL student, that has a home language of Vietnamese and speaks English at school. Speech is her only area keeping her from exiting the ESL program. I have been able to make connections to why she may be solving problems a particular way. When I was given a cognitive interview assignment for my math coursework, I specifically chose this student so I could also assess her communication and explanation of math. In this interview, she said, “Oh, it’s 6! Because, you can do this by subtract.” I connected this to the concept of underuse and overuse as explained in Ortega (2013). In my student’s case, she would be exhibiting underuse, the failure to use a suffix. I felt rewarded when I was able to connect the content in the textbook to experiences with my ESL student.

                 I found it important for teachers to know about the anxiety children may face with acquiring another language, whether it be a student learning English or a student learning another language academically. This is especially the case for teachers who have not experienced learning another language. Often, I have seen individuals become upset with ELLs because they have trouble understanding them. If a teacher responds negatively or shows frustration with communication with the ELL, it could affect their communicative self-confidence. Ortega (2013) states, “attitudes towards the L2 and its speakers will contribute to increased or diminished L2 motivation. These attitudes come from the collective values, beliefs, attitudes and even behaviours that are rewarded and modelled for the learner in the communities in which he or she participates” (p.174). It is so critical for educators to be mindful of how they are interacting with L2 learners when it so strongly affects their motivation and ultimately their rate and accuracy of second language acquisition. 

                 Creating a vBlog has allowed me to apply my learning of second language acquisition by using a different medium. Instead of simply writing, I was tasked with making a video in addition to a written reflection. By using the video format for my interviews in vBlog 2 and 3, I was able to create an engaging media piece for others to learn from and for myself to experience. I could not imagine reading a simple transcript from the interviews that took place between myself and my peers. Hearing many of the interviews supplemented my learning experience. Given the task of citing in APA for every assignment, I feel like over time, I have experienced great improvement with appropriately citing and making connections to cited material. This is an asset to have in higher education.

References:

Ortega, L. (2013). Understanding second language acquisition. Routledge.

Entry 3: Interview with an ESL Teacher

Please view the following link for my interview with an ESL teacher.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VHrgCEkeAFTOl1tlmAyNqPFhJE_P_Pw5/view?usp=sharing

Mrs. Chapman uses her experience in many different grades and recent ESL certification to connect the following concepts. 

My interviewee stated that her bilingual and monolingual students are cognitively different by the way they actively use both languages. She mentions that you can watch the students transition from one language to another in academic performance and see it happening. Students who are successful with this transfer between languages in academics may be exhibiting signs of automaticity, however, as mentioned in Ortega (2013), automaticity is not to be mistaken with accelerated or speedy behavior (p.85). 

My interviewee also mentioned that her students struggle academically when there is a lack of motivation and participation with parents at home due to a language barrier. I can infer that this struggle at school may be due to lack of practice at home, and when most practice is in a school setting with limited time per day. In the fifth chapter of Ortega (2013), it is stated that “prolonged and repeated practice changes the knowledge representation itself by making the stored knowledge become more elaborated and well specified” (p.85). For example, when homework is given, it is with the intention that we are moving academic concepts into our students’ long-term memory by giving opportunity for independent practice. I infer that students who are not able to build their long-term memory and explicit-declarative components of their L2 may experience difficulty in academics.

             From this insight into Mrs. Chapman’s personal experiences, I have determined that is important to allow students many opportunities to practice second language acquisition in class due to the possibility of there being a lack of practice at home.

References:

Ortega, L. (2013). Understanding second language acquisition. Routledge.

 

Entry 2: Interview With An ELL

     I interviewed Marco, my fiance’s brother in law. Marco recently married my fiance’s sister and has been a part of the family for the past few years, so interaction with him has been plentiful, even regarding speaking of his experience in learning English. Marco came to the US from Mexico with his parents and two younger brothers when he was 13 years old as a teenager. His brothers had an easier time transitioning into a US school, and I believe this is due to the brain plasticity difference. He has spoken about his culture shock and difficulty in transition and fitting in throughout his education in the United States, so I was interested to hear his experience with second language acquisition.

     From this interview, I learned that he struggles with his spelling. I made the assumption that because Marco excels in verbal English, he must not struggle with spelling. I also assumed that math and science were probably difficult for him when he was transitioning into a US school due to his instruction being in English. However, contrary to my belief, Marco mentioned that when he started school in Dallas, it was easy for him to understand the math content because he already learned it in Mexico, and Mexico was ahead in the curriculum. 

     A connection I made between this interview experience and the text is the topic of negative feedback. Marco says that English speakers have helped him the most by correcting him to speak the right way and additionally, his spelling. In the fourth chapter of Ortega (2013), negative feedback is praised, as “the accumulating evidence suggests that providing negative feedback in some form results in better post-test performance than ignoring errors” (p.75). 

References:

Ortega, L. (2013). Understanding second language acquisition. Routledge.