Vblog Entry 4- Second Language Acquisition viewpoint

                My understanding of the learning of an additional language has changed drastically with the information I have learned thus far.  I came to this class assuming that since I have experience in learning a second language I would have an upper hand in this class.  Boy was I wrong!  The “A” in SLA, “mean the process of learning additional languages” (Ortega, 2013, pg. 5) was not even what I thought it was going to be. My definition only skimmed a minute part of the term.  Learning a new language is a lengthy process.  However, the information this course provided was so much deeper and richer than I originally thought.  According to Ortega, “…attitudes towards the L2 and its speakers will contribute to increased or diminished L2 motivation” (Ortega, 2013, pg. 174).  I was motivated on starting this journey and it reflected in my understanding of learning Spanish for our language blog.  Also, it helped me connect with my Spanish-speaking peers and gave me pleasure knowing I mastered greetings and introductions in the targeted language. This experience aided me in understanding the steps behind learning an additional language. It gave me a different perspective on SLA.

          This class has broaden my view because I was able to observe SLA as both student and teacher mode.  My time practicing Spanish with the stems provided from our learning blogs gave me the opportunity to put myself as a beginner learner.  I practice pronouncing the new terms and only used the language I learned with my peers I am comfortable with.  The more difficult the Spanish words were for me the more nervous I was in speaking the words aloud.  Ortega mentions, “some individuals report experiencing intense feelings of apprehension, tension, and even fear, when they think of foreign languages” (Ortega, 2013, pg. 200) Since I have this same nervousness of speaking a foreign language I give my ELLs the opportunity to participate in speaking discussions if they choose.  Also, in my planning I give more thought into planning my lesson in how to differentiate my lesson for ELL students.  I am practicing on giving students more wait time.  I think overall I am more conscious of everyone’s learning style and I want to give my ELL students the same opportunity.

            I found foreign language aptitude the most interesting.  Going back to my experience as a young child I was able to grasp the understanding of speaking, reading and writing quicker than my other Vietnamese classmates. “People greatly differ in how fast, how well and by what means they learn an additional language” (Ortega, 2013, pg. 145).  In comparison with my peers, we had the same bilingual teachers and all came from similar backgrounds.  We all grew up in a really tight-knit Vietnamese community all within a few blocks of one another.  So how come the changes among us varied greatly?  This topic also mentions cognition, conation and affect as concepts researchers studied to understand differences.  Because of my childhood upbringing this topic really interest me.

            I have a love/hate relationship with our Vblogs.  I learned a lot from the interviewees I did for my post.  Reading my classmates reflection gave me their point of views so I was able to see how they relate to what we were reading that differs from mine.  Some of my peers were creative in making the language blogs and it made me think how come I did not think of it first.  All in all the connection I felt posting the comments and replies felt like community of learners.  We all shared a common goal and that is to be future educators.  The not so good news I have about our Vblogs and I know I am repeating myself on this, but for someone who is not technology savvy it took a tremendously amount of time transferring my interviews onto my computer.  It took me even longer to figure out what all I needed to do for the mp3 audios.  There has to be an alternative to make the assignments more efficient in sharing within the class.

Ortega, Lourdes. Second Language Acquisition. London: Routledge, 2013. Print.

Vblog3: Interview with an ELL Teacher

I interviewed Mrs. Meanor, an Elementary school teacher in FBISD. She has been a teacher for over fourteen years. In her fourteen years as a public-school educator she has had countless exposure to English Language Learners of many different languages and cultures. 

During my dialogue with my MT, she said her ELL students have the most difficulty with academic language.  These students, in most cases, do not experience a lot of difficulty with social language when communicating with their peers. However, these same English Language Learners are not able to understand the academic language their peers have been exposed to in the same setting. Researchers have studied "how language gradually develop the capacity to transform oral or everyday language and mobilize it into the range of formal and written registers that are required for successful functioning in academic contexts" (Ortega, 2013, pg.234).  ELL student may be able to follow along with math being taught in standard algorithm form because numbers do not pose a huge problem, but will have trouble deciphering which operation to choose in word problems, or if there were a prompt. In situations as this, the student has not learned the academic language needed to approach the problem.  For students to succeed in school they have to understand academic language. For ELL, teachers may have to use more visuals and present more background knowledge activities so students understand the vocabulary.

When teaching ELL students she also noticed the younger the ELL student the easier it was for them to transition in their L2 understanding.  The younger students are not afraid to use the language and make mistakes, where the older the students are more aware how others will react to what they say and how and how they say it. "New L2 knowledge is stored in the mind and has to be accessed and retrieved every time it is needed for use in comprehension or production" (Ortega, 2013, pg.84). Each ELL student has to process everything they read or write in English through their L1 filter to make sense of their understanding and it takes time. In comparison, the younger ELL students do not require such time to process new words. Therefore, they adapt quicker acquiring L2 than their counterparts.

While reviewing my interview video I see how challenging it can be for English Language Learners who do not have the support system I am exposed to at my school.  I see how important it is for ELL students to pre-learn academic terms and be able to connect how one word is similar to each other and how they can bring meaning to the new words. These students not only need to make connections to the word they have to be able to use it in real world situations. 

Ortega, Lourdes. Second Language Acquisition. London: Routledge, 2013. Print.

Click here for my video

Entry 2: English as a Second Language

Hello Everyone,

Today I interviewed Mr. Dang.  Mr. Dang was born in Palacios, Texas but his family moved away from the tight-knit Vietnamese community to Lafayette, Louisiana when he was still in Elementary.  Once they moved to Louisiana he was not exposed to the Vietnamese community as before. He mentioned in his interview that growing up his L1 is Vietnamese.  To this day he still speaks Vietnamese but English has became more dominant of the two.

Mr. Dang admitted a downfall in his L2 is digraphs.  When he pronounces his "th" as it should in English he knows its incorrect. "There is robust evidence that L1 transfer cannot radically alter the route of L2 but it can impact the rate of learners progress" (Ortega, 2013, p. 34). Therefore, he does shy away from using words with "th" to his peers.  His L1 plays a major role in this because although he is aware that it should be pronounce with the "th" sound something between his L1 and L2 just will not link up for him to pronounce those digraphs correctly.  In chapter 3, Ortega mentions there are negative and positive exchanges between studies of L1 and L2 acquisition.

Also, he admitted to speaking slang when he was younger and not knowing it was improper until he attended college. "The hypothesis is that L1 knowledge can inhibit certain L2 choices and prime others, thus resulting in the underuse and overuse of certain L2 forms in spoken and written learner production" (Oretga, 2013, p. 41). Me. Dang’s experiences with language as a child is a result of his surroundings.  In addition, its result effected his limited vocabulary and writing skills too.  Since he was not expose to different social class as a young boy he did not have the same experience has his college peers. Now that he is working medical field his colleagues would often correct him for using words out of context. He understand that for him to be fluent in both L1 and L2 he has to have the opportunity to use his L1 and L2 just as equally.

Vblog2

Vblog Entry 1: Course Introduction

Thom Tran's Blog

Click here for my video

Hello Everyone,

As you can tell from the video I am bilingual.  I spoke purely Vietnamese until after the age of three.  Ortega mentions "the bulk of language is acquired between 18 months to three to four years of age." (Ortega, 2013).  Where I was born was a very low socioeconomic class.  Each household would have the standard man of the house who works and bring home the paychecks.  The wife would always be a housewife and maintain the home for the family.  Because of this I grew up with all my relatives living in clusters of each other making it easier for everyone to speak in Vietnamese.  That leads me to the notion why my peers think I should consider myself as fluent in Vietnamese, but I would only label myself as proficient.


Ortega stated "how a bilingual speaker switch between two languages depending on their communicative needs", is true for me often at times. When I am speaking to my parents and about 40 percent of the time I will interchange between English and Vietnamese.  It is a common problem in our household.  Majority of the time its because my parents would never have said those terms to us, but while we are trying to communicate to them its something we can not explain since we do not know the correct terms to use.

In regards to my video, I thought it would have been much easier than I anticipated.  It was not even the Vietnamese to English translation that I had trouble with.  It was more of how did I want this video to flow.  I wanted it to be informative and with enough information.  I just hope it did not lack too much of anything.

Thank You,
Thom Tran

Ortega, Lourdes. Second Language Acquisition. London: Routledge, 2013. Print.