Hello! For
this Vblog, my sister, Mae, has agreed to share out her personal experiences as
an English Language Learner. I specifically wanted to interview my sister because
she just graduated from High School recently. Her English development was known
to be a positive learning experience because of the support through family and interventions
at public schools.
Mae’s primary
language is known to be Vietnamese, but our parents wanted to strictly focus on
her English development. She was given many positive reinforcements that
allowed her to find little to no difficulty in English comprehension. Fortunately,
my parents adopted an acculturation perspective which allowed both my siblings
and I to adapt or lessen our priority of learning English without having to
sacrifice Vietnamese (Wright, 2015, p. 20). In the interview, Mae mentions that
although she communicates with our family and grandparents in Vietnamese,
School was her greatest influence of English language development through
small-group interventions that focused on everyday concepts in Elementary. In
addition, after the video, she explained how she was able to incorporate her skills that she learned in the
interventions and apply it when assisting exchange-students from Spain to become
familiar with English through phonological and syntax (Wright, 2015, p. 35). Communication
and encouragement are key factors that allow my sister to feel at ease with her
L2 development.
After the video, I continued to interview my sister about her friends’ obstacles in
learning English. Although my sister had no problem learning English, she helped
her friend in building their vocabulary and comprehension through rewording instructions
and conversing on a daily basis. She mentions that knowing basic words through
children book is often a good start when first developing English. Her teachers
were unable to rephrase the instructions to “where students are able to draw [attention]
on what they know and can do in one language to make new meanings in another (Wright,
2015, p. 40). In order for students to succeed in their courses, teachers must
take account of the cultural differences of their students and be flexible of
adjusting their instructions. Although Mae's teacher did not allow a positive reinforcement, it challenged her friends to reach out for help from their peers. After interviewing my sister, I really hope to be as flexible as possible with my ESL students. I will be able to provide the additional resources such as library books, but I hope to build a strong rapport to where my students will discuss their struggles.
Wright, Wayne. Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon, 2015. Print. Second Edition
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