Blog Entry 3 Reflection
The person I interviewed for this blog
entry was Phyllis Flores. She was a bilingual and second language teacher in 1st,
2nd, 4th and 10th grade. Most of her experience
as a teacher was working with students trying to learn the English language at
various ages. I really enjoyed the interview because the information and experiences
she shared with me were relatable to what I am learning now. The experiences
she shared connected to what have read in the book and what I have listened to
in videos.
One thing that stood out to me throughout
the lesson was the language learning differences in children depending on their
age and grade. In the interview Mrs. Flores stated that the older children in
her classroom had a harder time learning English compared to the younger
children she taught. This may be true because of research by Oyama, “Five long term
studies reveled that when accomplishments in the L2 were compared after at least
5 years of residence in the L2 environment, then younger starters were clearly
better than adulty starters.” (1976).
Another thing that stood out to me
during this interview was when I asked about student motivation. As stated by
Mrs. Flores, in this case student motivation was very high among students in
her 10th grade class. “Gardener (2001) believed the highest and most
facilitative form of motivation was the integrative motivation. (Gardener,
2001). This motivation was seen in the students she taught in 10th
grade because these students were determined to learn English. They wanted to be
able to speak English in their new country and excel at it. Overall, I thought
the interview was very informative, because everything Mrs. Flores talked about
connected to what I have learned in this class. Please enjoy my video, thank you.
References
Oyama, S. (1976) A sensitive period in the acquisition of non-native
phonological system. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 5, 261-85.
Gardener, R.C (2001) Integrative motivation and second
language acquisition (pp. 1-19).
