Vblog Entry 2
VBlog: https://youtu.be/dvUlwfjE1FQ
The person I had the pleasure of interviewing
was Mew. She is from Thailand and came to the United States for college. We met
at Houston Community College in an elective course. Later, we both transferred
to the University of Houston. We had a mutual connection through the arts,
being that we both had an appreciation of music. In hindsight, I think our
mutual appreciation of music help tremendously with building a solid foundation
for communication purposes.
Mew’s first language was Thai and upon coming to
America she had little exposure to the English language. This lack of exposure to
English as a second language mainly due to the fact she was primary using her
first language as a sufficient means of communication in Thailand. I also think
that upon arriving to America, Mew became cultural immersed in a new
environment where the common language was English. This realization prompted
her to learn English as a second language because of the environment in which
she now lived.
The most challenging area of English that she
encountered was understanding the multiple implications of certain words. In
the beginning, Mew had a hard time decoding words in English because often she
would hear terms used in an informal manner. Mew’s recollection of the English
language improved as she grew older. Age definitely played a critical role in
her second language acquisition. She also benefited from socializing with other
English speakers and told me that this really helped her with learning English
as a second language. According to Ortega, this realization is due to the linguistic
environment in which Mew was exposed, referring to the “internal (cognitive)
and external (environmental) factors reciprocally interact (hence the word ‘interactionist’) and together affect the observed processes
and outcomes of a phenomenon – in this case, additional language learning”
(Ortega, 2013, p.55). Through social interaction, Mew was able to accelerate her
second language learning.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHello there Ayodele! Thank you for your video. It was interesting to hear about your friend New’s experience. Growing up with mainly Spanish and English speakers in my schools and neighborhood I didn’t really grow up seeing other nationalities also making their transitions from there L1 to L2. I also had some of the same troubles decoding certain words. According to Ortega “in order to understand L1 transfer, one needs to go beyond L1–L2 formal correspondences. That is, in the end, a better understanding of the forces that shape cross linguistic influence rests not with external language comparisons, but with learners’ psychological perceptions of those L1–L2 similarities or differences.”(Ortega,2013 pg33) I am glad to hear that her social experiences helped her achieve her second language, as they were also a big factor in mine.
ReplyDeleteI really loved watching and reading about your interview with your friend Mew. This is the first video I watched where the interviewee learned a second language at an older age. Due to the fact that her first language is Thai and she moved here when she started college, means that she was thrown into this whole new environment that was/is predominantly English. I also believe that this immersion into this new environment and her age influenced her to process the language quickly although she did struggle with words with multiple meanings. Ortega (2013), mentions how older learners who are immersed into a new environment with a new language do learn but struggle with with closed-class words and her experience with multiple meaning words could be due to her age when she started learning the second language.
ReplyDelete