Entry 4: Self Reflection

Learning a brand-new language is never an easy process.  From what I’ve studied, learned, and observed throughout this semester from this course and in my student teaching experience, I understand that the culture shock of ELL students is likely to be the heaviest challenge they face when they enter a public school in the United States.  It is during this period that effective instruction is most essential for the ELL’s learning.  Teachers must discover different methods to modify his/her lesson to help ELL students succeed in their academic learning.  Effective instruction is not only delivering the content, however.  It also involves the teacher developing a relationship with each individual student and understanding their backgrounds.  A teacher’s role is not just to effectively instruct, but to also demonstrate positivity and give constant encouragement of letting the students know they will succeed.

One of the topics we learned in this course that I felt stood out was linguistic accommodations.  Linguistic accommodations that can be provided to ELLs during instruction revolve heavily around communication.  The teacher must communicate authentically with students using situations that they are able to grasp the information and actually understand it while using scaffolding methods that aim towards excelling in the grade-level English and academic content.  Teachers use the materials, techniques, and tools that distinguish the instruction to meet the needs of the ELL students.  As times progress, the ELLs’ needs for particular accommodation will eventually decrease.  These linguistic accommodations will assist ELL students in comprehending the language during instruction, and therefore, the learning process will speed up for both English and subject matter (Accommodation).

This class has had a significant part in impacting my professional practice as well.  ELL students constantly face and find a balance of the unique learning challenge of developing skills necessary to perform well in the classroom.  Our goal as educators is to help them master the content while simultaneously acquiring the academic English language.  This is difficult for many of the younger students as well because they still have not yet fully mastered their own native language.  Due to these factors in their learning process, teachers must create classrooms that support the use of learning a language, which also leads to motivation for students.  “Motivation is usually understood to refer to the desire to initiate L2 learning and the effort employed to sustain it, and in lay terms we all understand it to be a matter of quantity, as in the everyday observation that some learners are highly motivated and others have little or no motivation,” (Ortega, 2011, p. 168).  Ortega emphasized how important motivation is for second language learners in the sense that motivation is what will drive the students to develop the desire to learn a new language.  Learning how to build opportunities for students to acquire language and content is part of professional development.  Teachers will also learn how to create these opportunities through scaffolding, well-structured lesson plans, and purposeful tasks.  Taking this course has helped me prepare for my future classroom in the fact that it prepares me appropriately serve all ELL students. 

I felt the Vblog was a great learning experience.  It allowed me the opportunity to communicate with my classmates more and practice learning different second languages.  I am an ELL student, myself, and I still struggle with English grammar today.  However, taking part in the Vblog has immensely helped me to improve both my writing and speaking skills because I was able to learn from my fellow classmates through their reflections and comments.  “Bilingual speakers can switch and alternate between their two (or more) languages, depending on a range of communication needs and desires (Ortega, 2013, p.4).  I had to constantly think in Chinese, but type/write in English, so I was going back and forth between two languages.  It is a very effective way of building strength in learning a second language. 

            Taking this course was challenging for me.  However, I consider it a great challenge because it pushed me to want to succeed, which is something I strive to help my students do.  This SLA class taught me the essential steps in learning a second language and the different strategies I can take in creating a classroom setting that allows for ample engagement where the students are given the opportunity to feel comfortable in participating and communicating with one another.  I believe that the ideals that this course has provided for us have helped me become a better educator.  I can finish this semester knowing I feel more confident in my skill set when delivering English lessons to my future ELL students. 

Ortega, Lourdes. Second Language Acquisition. London: Routledge, 2011. Print.

Entry 3: Interview with Ms.De la Mora

                                            Video: https://youtu.be/MVoM5zKiwns
    "Languages are almost always learned with and for others, and these others generate linguistic evidence, rich or poor, abundant or scarce, that surrounds learners"(Ortega, 2013, pg. 55). Language learning emerges through environments and from social interaction. The environment that language learners grow up in will heavily affect how well and how quickly they learn to speak and communicate. 

          This past week, I had the opportunity to interview Ms. De la Mora. She is a fourth-grade language teacher who learned Spanish as her second language.  We talked about how the environment helps her students use their first language to assist them in learning their second language.  She discussed with me how she has to be patient with her students and explain to them in both English and Spanish so that they can make connections between the two languages. She later goes into detail about how the languages are not structured the same when people have conversations with each other.  For example, “Instead of saying Ms. De la Mora's book, we have to say the book of Ms. De la Mora.”  These are grammar and speaking strategies that must be taken into consideration when educating a child and the connections/differences between languages.  I later asked Ms. De la Mora how cultural background influences second language acquisition.  She went into detail about how a major focus is to avoid segregation.  Many of these students are labeled as “the Spanish kids”, which she is very against.  Ms. De la Mora never refers to her students with any label. Instead, she simply says that her students are in a bilingual classroom, which helps the students feel welcomed in a public school environment and will continue to motivate them to excel in the English language.  Ms. De la Mora also often refers back to her ELPS flip book as a resource regarding her lessons that she delivers to her students.  The book is simple and effective. It gives the teacher many great ideas on what to incorporate into a student’s academic development regarding their different levels of learning. 

           Ms. De la mora emphasized that students need “oral interaction with one or more interlocutors” (Ortega, 2013, pg. 60).  Her ELPS flip book supports this quote in the sense that it gives strategies on how to improve the students’ oral communication.  As an educator, we must understand why it is so important to find materials that are beneficial to our students and relevant to them because it motivates the learning process and acquisition of language.

          In conclusion, the data I collected from the interview with Ms.De la mora and using what I learned in this course helped me to understand how to help facilitate and model a positive attitude towards students learning a new language.  I must also ensure students are acquitted to the new language and vocabulary that comes with it. Second language learning is essential for ensuring our students to feel successful in a dominant language environment.

Ortega, L.(2013)Understanding  Second Language Acquisition. Routledge

Entry 2: Interview with a ...

Video: https://youtu.be/62Y4RiIgKb0

Hello everyone,
     For this week Vlog assignment, I got to interview my classmate, Jeanette Nguyen. She was born and raised in the United States, but her first language was Vietnamese.  As she grew older, English became her first language. Jeanette mentioned in the video that she started learning English in preschool, and she was lucky enough to have a Vietnamese teacher to translate for her.  According to Ortega, “Naturalistic learners learn the L2 through informal opportunities in multicultural neighborhoods, school, and workplaces…” (Ortega, 2013, pg. 6) and “Instructed learners learn additional languages through formal study in school or university, through private lessons and so on.” (Ortega, 2013. Pg. 6).  Jeanette would fit into both the categories because she first learned English in her preschool class continued to develop more English words/phrases through social involvement.

        During the conversation, Jeanette said as she grew older, English eventually developed into her first language, and she would only speak Vietnamese to her mom since her mom does not speak English. But when she talks to her dad, she would speak both English and Vietnamese. Ortega stated that"the bilingual speakers switch and alternate between their two (or more) languages, depending on a range of communicative needs and desires."(Ortega, 2013, pg. 4) For Jeanette, she can easily switch back and forth between the two languages.

    During my interview with Jeanette, I was able to make many learning connections with her, such as having the experience of learning a new language. Those learning experiences gave us great opportunities to help our future  English learner students.



Refrences:

 Ortega, L.(2013)Understanding  Second Language Acquisition. Routledge

Entry 1: Course Introduction

            

Video: https://youtu.be/QLgkJOiQbFs

      Hello, everyone. My name is Fei (Lori) Zhao, and I am a senior at the University of Houston Sugar Land campus. My major is teaching and learning with a EC-6 certification. I am doing my student teaching in 5th grade at Mission Bend Elementary School. The grade level I want to teach in the future is kindergarten. According to Ortega, students learn and practice syntax during kindergarten. The reason I want to be an educator is because I love children, and I want to make a difference and have a impact on their lives. I want to expand their knowledge about the world and influence them to become better individuals in the future. 

          I was born in China (inner Mongolia). My first language is Mandarin Chinese, and I continue to communicate mostly in Mandarin. When I was 10 years old, I moved to Houston, and that's when I first started learning English as my second language.   To me, learning English was the hardest and most terrifying thing I had ever done. At the beginning of the school year, I barely spoke any English, and my vocabulary was limited to very simple words. However, the school provided me with a wonderful ESL class to help me with effectively learn English. By the end of the school year, I was able to pick up on many phrases. According to Ortega, “learners in which learn an additional language through formal study in school or a university, through private lessons and so on” (Ortega, 2013, pg. 6).

           As time goes by, my English continues to improve. I do often find myself still struggling with grammar. Ortega mentions in the article, that "A Second language learner needs to learn the grammar." (Ortega,2013). I still also have to constantly ask others to help proofread my grammar in my writing assignments.  Therefore, I definitely agree with Ortega on how important grammar development is in the process of learning English.

In this class, I'm really looking forward to learning another language. Ortega mentions that "Second Language Acquisition, because of its complexity and its reliance on an import for other disciplines, is not placed so easily" (Ortega, 2013). I understand it is going to be challenging, but it will also be fun.

Refrences:

 Ortega, L.(2013)Understanding  Second Language Acquisition. Routledge