CUIN 4303

     Today I had the honor of interviewing a great teacher and family friend of mine, Karen McGee. She has had a lot of experience with English Language Learners, so I knew she would be just the right person to talk to over this topic. According to Rowland, "In other families, the parents only speak one language, so the child only hears the second language outside the home. This is the case for many immigrant families" (2014, pg. 176). Karen had mentioned something during the interview that went to agree with Rowlands statement. She mentioned that most of her ELLs speak only Spanish at home. I found interesting though when she mentioned that o nce the  studen t  becomes fluent in English, they often  do not care to speak Spanish anymore. However, she helps them realize how beneficial it is to be bilingual and how that will soon come to their advantage.         According to Rowland, "At this stage (1), the children had very...

In this video, I had the opportunity to interview a young adult who learned English as his second language. Kevin came from El Salvador to America when he was in the First Grade. According to Rowland, "One factor that has a major effect on multilingual language development is the age at which the child starts to learn each language" (2014, pg.1 75 ). Kevin was fortunate enough to move to America at a young age, so that now he is fluent and understands English very well. Although he is still considered bilingual, due to the lack of use of Spanish outside his home, he is losing memory of the language.  As mentioned in the interview, Kevin states that he is now more dominant in English. This goes to prove Rowlands statement "For most, one language is dominant, and this is often the  community language rather than the home language" (2014, pg. 176). Now that he has lived in an  English speaking  community for the past ten years, English has now become his strongest...

As you can see from my video,  I grew up in a small town that did not consist of much diversity. The only other language I had ever heard spoken before was Spanish. When I was in  high s chool , I was given 4 options of what I could take as a foreign language class.  C onsidering the people surrounding me in my town, I figured S panish  would be the most beneficial language to learn. Ortega wrote "all languages, no matter how different from each other they may seem, share fundamental commonalities, a universal core of very abstract properties" ( 2013, pg. 2 )   .  I would have never of came to that realization if it  weren't for taking a foreign language.  Bilingual people have always amazed  me ,  and I have wished for the longest  that   I could be fluent in another language.  According to Ortega, "in many parts of the globe, most children grow up speaking two or more  languages simultaneously. These cases are ...