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.