SLAReyesKeniaFall18

Welcome back! For this entry, I decided to interview a classmate, Thom Tran. Thom Tran is a student at the University of Houston. Thom is Vietnamese. She is bilingual in Vietnamese and English. English is her second language and in this video, she shares her experiences learning English as a second languages and some challenges she has encountered. Interview with Thom Tran  My interview with Thom has allowed me to make connections with what I have read in this SLA class. As you saw in my video, Thom has informed us that she is bilingual in Vietnamese and in English. I have known Thom for a while now, so I know that Vietnamese is her mother tongue, or L1 and English is her L2. Thom grew up speaking Vietnamese until she began elementary school. Once she started elementary school, she began learning her L2 (English). Ortega states that "Children acquiring their first language complete the feat within a biological window of four to six years of age" (Ortega, 2013, p.1...

Kenia Reyes's Blog Click here to watch the video As you saw in my video, I am fluent in both English and Spanish. According to Ortega (2013), most children grow up speaking one language only. This was partly the case for me. Since I was born in Guatemala, I was born in a household where everybody spoke nothing but Spanish. Once I moved to the states, I continued to speak Spanish up until I had to start elementary school. It was in elementary school where I began learning my L2. As I continued to read chapter one,  I came across a sentence that stood out to me. "Human language manifests itself in spoken, signed and written system across more than 6,500 languages documented to date" (Ortega, 2013, p.2). I found this to be very shocking, but I could also see how it is true. Recently, my mentor teacher and I were on the carpet with our students and we were getting to know them a little better. We decided to ask how many of them knew how to speak or write in a different...