Blog Entry 2：https://youtu.be/q0Lc04Kngr4
Hi everyone, welcome to my blog 2 entry. This past weekend, I had a great opportunity to interview Kaiyi Chen. He is the child Paster for my church. I have known Kaiyi for 7 years, but we never really talked about the experience of being ELL students. Kaiyi and I both shared the same native language (Mandarin), so we mostly spoke to each other in Chinese.
Kaiyi moved to the United States when he was in high school, and he never learned English before. Kaiyi is a sequential bilingual. According to Wright (2015), “did not start learning English until arriving in the United States at an older age” (Wright, 2015, p. 5). Since I was a sequential bilingual also, I was able to relate with how he felt when he first moved here. During the interview, Kaiyi mentioned that when he was learning English, speaking the language was the most challenging part. Not having the courage to speak makes it difficult to improve in writing, listening and reading skills of English. According to Wright (2015) “Master the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing in English” (Wright, 2015, p. 82). Those 4 skills are essential for an ELL learner.
Another connection I had with Kaiyi was that we both were afraid and refused to communicate with others, which made it difficult for us to learn English and fully accept English as our new language. According to Wright (2015), "knowing a language means being able to use it to communicate effectively and appropriately with other speakers of the language” (p.36). After this interview as an ELL learner, I found out that I am not the only one who struggled to learn English and didn't have a great experience in learning English as a second language. Because of the experience I had, I'll know how to help my ELL students in the future. Thank you for viewing my blog.
Reference
Wright, W. E. (2015). Foundations for teaching English language learners: research, theory, policy, and practice. Philadelphia: Caslon Publishing.
