Reflection
This
interview with a friend of mine who happens to be a second language learner was
extremely eye opening for me. First of all, I went into the interview assuming
she falls under the category of bilingual acquisition or multilingual
acquisition, which refers to “the process of learning two or more languages
relatively simultaneously during early childhood” (Ortega, 2013, p. 4). As soon
as I asked my first question, the truth was revealed. The interviewee explained
that she learned Spanish as soon as she was able to speak. Thus, making it her
first language. Moreover, once she began Pre-school at the age of four, she
then acquired her second language, English. I found that this concept of
learning a second language at such a young age correlates to something Ortega
states in Chapter 1. According to Ortega (2013), “The individuals learning an additional
language are still young children when they start acquiring the L2, maybe as
young as three or four years old” (p. 4). She considers this age period to have
had a somewhat negative affect on her proficiency because she did not become as
fluent in English until at least the fifth grade. She mentions that most instruction
was given in Spanish, therefore she felt more confident and comfortable in her mother
tongue. This idea of feeling more confident in the mother tongue is not surprising.
Clearly both monolingual and bilingual children are affected by the amount of language
that they hear. In other words, “the more language a child hears, the quicker
she will develop language” (Rowland, 2014, p. 193).
Inasmuch, my interviewee mentions a few
times that she received more exposure to Spanish due to growing up in a
monolingual household. Everyone around her mostly spoke Spanish, therefore she
had no other choice but to embrace the language. Additionally, her main reason
for learning English was because that was the majority language spoken in
school. According to Ortega (2013), “Many others will be forced by life
circumstances to learn enough of the additional language to fend for themselves
in selected matters of daily survival” (p. 1). This idea directly leads into my
question of asking whether she was a naturalistic or an instructed learner. I
was surprised to find out that she is indeed both. Naturalistic learners learn
the L2 through informal opportunities and instructed learners learn through
formal study (Ortega, 2013, p. 6). From her responses I could infer that
because she learned Spanish in a more natural setting, it is her go-to language
in most scenarios, at least outside the school walls. Although, it must be
noted that she is still confident in speaking and reading her second language
even though she has some difficulties with her pronunciation of certain words.
Furthermore, I found it noteworthy to
discuss that she did not acquire her second language in a similar way to her
family and friends. I asked this question because the text mentions that “individuals
vary greatly both in how fast and how far they will go in learning their second
language” (Ortega, 2013, p. 9). I was curious to know if her learning
experiences were completely different from those near to her. As mentioned in
the video, her family members enrolled in English courses in order to
assimilate into the American culture, and to simply fend for themselves
especially in the workplace.
All in all, this interview with a second
language learner has improved my understanding of the knowledge we have
obtained thus far about learning an additional language. It turns out that there
are several universal factors that help shape the nature and pace towards
learning a second language (Ortega, 2013, p. 9). With respect to my
interviewee, some of those factors are age, environment, and even the native
language spoken mostly within the home.
