Entry 3: Interview with a Teacher of ELLs

Reflection

For this assignment, I interviewed Ms. Hernandez, whom is a bilingual kindergarten teacher at the local elementary school. Although she graduated college about 17 years ago and did not know how to respond to most of the interview questions, she still managed to make connections between second language learning and what she has witnessed and experienced as a teacher. Some of the topics that were vaguely discussed were learning rate and crosslinguistic influences.

When asked about similarities and differences between bilingual and monolingual students, Ms. Hernandez made a reference to learning rate. She discussed that her monolingual students spoke Spanish and that her bilingual students spoke Spanish and English, and that they both learned [English] but at different capacities. A dependent factor of this was how much background knowledge of English the students had, as well as the amount of exposure. Learning rate was referenced again later when she stated that ELLs with bilingual family members learn at a faster rate due to exposure and practice at home. This brings to mind Ortega’s (2011) statement that “increased practice leads to lower levels of neural activation, because with more practice the same processing task will consume less resources” (p. 22). In other words, the more practice someone gets, the less mental effort they put in and the easier it becomes.

Ms. Hernandez also talked about crosslinguistic influences, specifically problems that students had with syntax and language mixing. When asked what area of English she noticed her ELLs struggled with the most, she answered with grammar and word order, which is essentially syntax. This was intriguing because her students are about four or five years old, and Rowland (2014) states that “studies show that bilingual children develop syntax and morphology early, easily and in accordance with the target grammar of each language” (p. 181). In other words, studies say bilingual children learn syntax early and easily, but Ms. Hernandez experiences the contrary with her students. She also mentioned that beginning proficiency ELLs code switch (Rowland, 2014). They specifically perform lexical mixing, which is “when one or two words from one language are inserted into a sentence made up of words from the other language” (Rowland, 2014, p. 177). However, intermediate proficiency level ELLs will speak in English, their L2, but phrase it incorrectly. This can best be explained by Rowland’s (2014) statement “that the children had only one language system, which included words from both languages. At this stage, the children had very few translation equivalent words; which means that if they had a word in one language they tended not to have a word with a similar meaning in their other language. When they did have similar words, they tended to use them for different meanings” (p. 177). This can best be exemplified by Ms. Hernandez’s example in the video, in which her students use the word “coming” when translating “vamos” (going) incorrectly.

References: 

Ortega, L. (2011). Understanding second language acquisition. London: Routledge.

Rowland, C. (2014). Understanding child language acquisition. New York: Routledge.

Entry 2: Interview with a Second Language Learner

Reflection

For this assignment, I chose to interview my fellow classmate, Mary De Leon. She was born in Watsonville, California to her parents of whom are of Mexican origin. Due to her family background, Spanish is her first language. According to Mary’s story, she learned Spanish at home. We can safely assume that she learned Spanish naturalistically, which Ortega (2011) defines as learning the “L2 through informal opportunities...without ever receiving any organized instruction on the workings of the language they are learning” (p. 6). However, she states that she learned her second language, English, through schooling. This is best described as instructed learning, in which “learners learn additional languages through formal study in school” (Ortega, 2011, p. 6).

Specifically, she began learning her second language during the first grade, which is equivalent to roughly about 6 to 7 years of age. Mary believes that due to her young age when learning English, and the increased practice of it at school, she was able to acquire the L2 faster than the L1. Ortega (2011) tells of a study by Sebastián-Gallés et al. in which “their participants did best in the language they were more actively and consistently using in daily activities at the time of study,” (p. 26) supporting Mary’s belief of acquiring her L2 faster than her L1 due to daily practice. This may also attribute to her dominance in English, which classifies her as a dominant bilingual (Gass, 2013). Rowland acknowledges that “for most [L2 learners], one language is dominant, and this is often the community language rather than the home language” (2014, p. 176).

Mary also states that although English is her dominant language, she still “speaks Spanglish.” This term has been unofficially recognized as the interaction between the Spanish and English language. As for the way she uses both languages, she uses words from one language in order to fill in the gaps for completing sentences in another language to make herself be understood. This is most closely related to studies Rowland has mentioned, in which “the children were much more likely to slot words from the ‘wrong’ language into their speech when they did not know the appropriate word in the ‘right’ language” (2014, p. 179). Interestingly enough, “why one cannot keep languages and interlanguages apart and why the mixing and merging of various languages known and being learned occurs are issues at the heart of research” (Gass, 2013, p. 22). Hopefully future studies give us even more insight as to possible causes of the mixing between and merging of languages, and how that helps second language learners advance in their learning.

References:

Gass, S. (2013). Second language acquisition: An introductory course. New York: Routledge.

Ortega, L. (2011). Understanding second language acquisition. London: Routledge.

Rowland, C. (2014). Understanding child language acquisition. New York: Routledge.

Entry 1: Introduction

¡Bienvenidos! Greetings!

Click here to watch my video.

As stated in my video, the first language that I learned was Spanish. Ortega (2013, p. 8) mentioned that “the age of onset of acquisition, or how early or late in life one should start to learn an additional language after the mother language” was hotly debated by parents, and I saw this happen firsthand with my own parents. I took bilingual classes for most of my elementary school years in which I learned English alongside Spanish. However, my younger sister took purely monolingual English classes for most of those early years. Because of this difference, she has a stronger foundation in her second language both compared to my second language foundation and compared to her first language which is also Spanish.

With this being said, although Spanish is my first language, it is not the language that I am most fluent in. I find this interesting about myself considering that Ortega mentions that “as children grow older and their life circumstances diversify, different adolescents and adults will embark on different kinds of literacy practice and use language for widely differing needs” (2013, p. 4). Personally, as I became more involved in academics, my need to speak English would increase while my need to speak Spanish would decrease, which could explain the difference in language proficiencies. To further elaborate, after elementary school I took two year round Spanish courses for native speakers but the rest of my classes were in English. Thus, I would have an abundance of practice in the English language which in turn made it stronger, while it made my proficiency in Spanish weaker. In order to practice my Spanish more often, as I only speak it at home, I try to make yearly visits to Mexico to see my family. By being in an environment that “forces me” to speak the language, I am more motivated to use it continually and learn new phrases that I may have missed out on in my early years.

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