Posts

Blog 4 Reflection piece on SLA

-
Understanding of SLA From my understanding of learning a second language, there are many factors that affect its attainment. Some of these factors such as age, cross linguistic/ cultural influences, environment, mental capacity and personal investment all affect the extent to which a language is learned. These influences impact the way we understand and interact with one another, particularly true for educators. The implications for learning a second language extends beyond the classroom. Learning a second language could mean survival for a foreigner, an advantage in the business setting, or even something as simple as wanting to understand the cultures of another language. Age is a debated and highly researched area in second language acquisition. From what I learned about age is that older children and adults has an advantage in learning a second language for the first year or so but eventually the younger children who had an early start will surpass them. The age that they le...
10 comments
Read more

Interview with a Second language learner

-
Blog 2 composition For my Second blog entry, I am interviewing my girlfriend. Her name is Mandy Yang. Her first language is Chinese, and she was born in a small village in China. She first started learning English at around age five. Mandy says that the way she began learning English was from her elementary school, where she was placed in a separate class to learn English one hour a day. In Ortega’s book, Languages in school may experience as little as 540 hours of actual instructional L2 exposure in a course of five years.  (Ortega, 2011, p. 17). During her elementary years, Mandy says that she did not speak or participate as much and had a silent period for as long as 3-4 years. With the level of exposure to classroom setting and learning, she may not have learned English as well as she did if she was learning it without being immersed in the language. However, because she is being exposed to English every day, she was able to pick up on the grammar and words that she recogniz...
8 comments
Read more

Self introduction

-
Hello! My name is Joseph. I was born and raised in Texas. My parents were raised in Vietnam and as a result, I grew up speaking Vietnamese fluently as well as English. My father is Chinese and works in the china town area of Houston. From years of listening and growing up in that area, I am able to hear and understand a little bit of Chinese as well. My family is mainly Vietnamese. My dad is Chinese but his family lives in Vietnam. My father speaks Chinese and Vietnamese however I can only speak Vietnamese and English. I do not remember at what age I started learning English, but I can remember that English was part of me for as long as I can remember. The only other language that I somewhat learned was Spanish, but it was only for classes back in middle and high school.  In the video I will go into more detail. 
6 comments
Read more