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.
