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Entry 4: Reflection

            In the beginning of the semester I had no idea that there was a study of second language acquisition.  I mean I knew that people learned new languages every day, but I had never put any thought into how they learned a second language or that maybe it was learned differently than the first one. My own experience with learning a second language was through my high school Spanish courses. Honestly, didn’t spend much time thinking about the language itself or the fact that I could be learning a new language. I took those classes for the grade and the grade only, never to gain a new language. As the course of the semester I was kind of in shock. There were so many things that affected the way someone learned a new language and how proficient they were at it. In my own ignorance I never even thought of how second language acquisition could affect me and my future students. I understand know that there are many components to look at when dealing ...
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Blog Entry 3: Interview

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I interviewed a second-year bilingual math teacher for my blog 3 entry. When I asked about what motivated her students in the classroom. She talked about how making the content easily relatable to their lives, made it more interesting to them. In the text, Orientation refers to reasons for wanting to learn the second language. One of the reasons is knowledge; so, the language learner wants to become a more knowledgeable person. I think that this could apply to Ms. Ramirez’s students because they want to become better in their second language so that they can become more knowledgeable in math. Also for the students who are new arrivals Ms. Ramirez told me outside of the interview that they tend to be self-conscious for themselves and push to learn English because they want to be able to fit in with the rest of the students who speak English (Ortega, . This also fits with the other orientation of Integrativeness, which is where the second language learner has a genuine desire to becom...
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Blog Entry 2: Interview

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This is my interview with my best friend Alexa ,who is bilingual. For this interview, I chose to use my best friend Alexa, who is a bilingual college student. Alexa’s mother language is Spanish and her second learned language is English. This interview really opened my eyes as to the struggles of someone who has learned more than one language at a relatively young age. During the interview she talked about the certain struggles she had to overcome when learning English and how it affected her school career and her family. Alexa learned Spanish prior to moving to Texas, where she then learned English. Alexa talked about how learning two languages had both its advantages and disadvantages, in life and in school. According to Alexa, learning her first language actually helped her learn her second one. This also helped her in school because she was able to connect her mother language vocabulary to the English language vocabulary. This connects to the theory that learning your first ...
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Blog Entry 1: Introduction

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This is my first blog entry, click on the video to watch! 
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