Reflection Prior to taking Second Language Acquisition, I did not have formal understanding of how a language is learned. Although I have experience in learning other languages, I did not take the opportunity to reflect on my own learning process then. It is interesting now to reflect on my experiences in acquiring and learning another language. This distinction where acquisition requires meaningful interaction rather than learning formal processes was new to me, and this helped shape my understanding of second language acquisition. Reflecting back on my own experiences, I can see that my formal education of languages in school taught me the foundation of languages, in other words where I learned language. But I had much more success acquiring language informally when interacting with my friends who could speak another language and trying to acquire meaning. This class gave me insight on how language is learned so that allows me to better understa...
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Entry 3: Interview with Second Language Teacher
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Hello, below is my interview and reflection. My interview video is here (16:54). Reflection The interviewee is Ms. Gilmer a second language teacher who started her education in Ecuador and finished her education at the University of Houston. She has had many years of experience teaching students of all grade levels, from k-12 and university. The majority of her teaching career has been with middle school students. She finds that the population of successful, autonomous learners are small. Most students will have problems with motivation in second language acquisition. In her experience with teaching a wide age range of students, she also found that younger students tend to do better with learning a second language. This reflects Ortega’s observation that “younger is better in the long run” (2009) in regards to second language acquisition. The younger students seem to be more attentive and participatory. Ms. Gilmer advises that 6th grade and younger is a really good time for secon...
Entry 2: Interview with Hung Phan
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Hi all, below is my interview with someone who learned English as a second language as a child and my reflection. Thank you for visiting blog entry 2. Click here for interview video The interviewee Hung Phan is a close friend who learned English as a second language at the age of 11 when he moved from Vietnam to the United States. He began feeling confident in his L2 after 2 years and is fluent in both languages now. His learning environment at the New Arrival Center (NAC) program seemed to really benefit his second language acquisition. Hearing about the NAC program was interesting and new to me. Learning English with peers who are on the same level of language acquisition seemed helpful for Hung. Ortega notes “grammar acquisition cannot be successful without applying ‘interest’, ‘attention’ and ‘hard work’ to the task of cracking the language code” (2009, p. 58). Hung’s community of learners and attitude to his learning environment helped fuel that interest, attenti...