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.
Hello Lori,
ReplyDeleteI ‘m totally understands the challenges and difficulties that you and Kaiyi had been go through when learning English as a second language because I was also an ELLs high school student. 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). When I communicate with others, I'm afraid people will laugh at me because of my broken English. So, I know it is very hard to speak English with other people. From your interview and my experience, I think that we can help students realize that they are not alone and many of others including ourselves have/had to overcome the difficulties of learning this second language just like them. I hope that it’s can increase student’s motivation and self-confident.
Hi Quynh
DeleteThank you for watching my blog two entry, and put your thoughtful comment into it. I think is true for all the ELL learners, speaking is really hard for us, even now when I speak to somebody, I still feel afraid that my accent will confuse them and make them laugh. But I think if we never come out for our comfort zone we will never be able to learn a new language or have the confidence to speak it out. For an ELL learner speaking, listening, reading, and writing is all important of learning English, according to Wright (2015) “Master the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing in English” (Wright, 2015, p. 82). I feel we have to help out our future student to understand the importance of each skill.
Hi Fei. I enjoyed the interview between you and Kaiyi. Speaking another language can be challenging at an older age, and without any proper guidance, it'll be a lot more difficult to adapt to the new language as well as the new classroom environment. Even so, they still have some advantages to learning a new language. According to Wright, (2010), older learners may have learning strategies they developed in the first language that will help them as they learn a second langauge (Wright, 2010, pg. 37). As teachers, we have to provide students guidance into learning and adapting to the new culture and environment so that they'll be able to use their language to learn the content area.
ReplyDeleteHey Michelle
DeleteThank you for watching my video and glad that you enjoyed watching. I agree with you that as a future educator we have to guided and help our ELL students the proper way to adopting a new language. I think learning the concept of a new language is really challenge for new language learners, as a teacher we must to try our best to help our students out. According to Wright, 2015 pg,91 "learning new concepts and skills can be challenging and its even harder in a language do not know or do not know very well."
Hi Fei. I'm glad that you agree that we have to guide and help our ELL students to adopt a new language. And yes, new concepts can be challenging, and I know this from experience when I have to take another language courses for high school credit, and some of them are different compare to couple other of languages I spoken. It takes time and resources to accomplish that.
DeleteA big thing that stood out to me from your interview was how Kaiyi mentioned how he believes teachers should be aware of ELLs diverse backgrounds and Wright (2015) agrees. “Educators who work with ELLs must be aware of the linguistic diversity in their schools and surrounding communities” (Wright, 2015, p. 13). Kaiyi mentioned how he was assigned an impromptu speech and the word impromptu itself was new to him. The topic he was given was also something that he was not familiar with and his teacher just told him to go through with it. This is where I think Wright (2015), meant that teachers should be aware of their ELLs backgrounds. Instead of saying the word impromptu, the teacher could have explicitly stated what the students were supposed to do. Also, teachers should keep in mind to include topics that ALL students will be aware of. I’m curious to know if you went through a similar situation in your studies?
ReplyDeleteHey Angelica
DeleteThank you for viewing my blog. Just like kaiyi mention that he was assigned an impromptu speech and the word he had it was new to him, I also had the same situation when I was first learning English. As an ELL learner, we often feel embarrassed when there is a word or sentence we don't understand and also have to deal in front of many people. For myself I really dislike when people speak slang with me when I first learning English, even right now I still don't understand some of the slangs. It hard for ELL learner to accept the same language concepts as their home language. According to Wright, 2015 pg,91 "learning new concepts and skills can be challenging and its even harder in a language do not know or do not know very well."
I was also an ELL and I feel like all ELLs go through embarrassing experiences while learning a new language. Like you mentioned, slang can be very confusing and I think it is very important for teachers to be aware of the language that use in their classrooms. I think that teachers should take the time to get to know their students and that can hopefully lead to them avoiding putting ELLs on the spot and cause them embarrassing and high-anxiety moments. Anxiety has a big effect on language development and teachers should do their best to help students overcome it or avoid it (Krashen, 2015).
DeleteHi Fei!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed watching your interview with Kaiyi and hearing about his experiences with the English language! I personally have always had an interest in Asian culture and language so it's great to hear about how someone transitioned from such a different style of language to English. It sounds as though semantics, "the study of the meaning of words, phrases, and sentences," (Wright, 2015, p.33) was a major part of Kaiyi's development toward learning English. I had not thought much about it before but, considering how extremely diverse in differences Germanic languages are compared to Asian languages, it makes sense that the meanings behind words themselves would be a more major factor in the progression of learning English.
Wright, W. E. (2015). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice. Philadelphia: Caslon Publishing.
Hey Ryan
DeleteI'm glad that you enjoyed watching my video. I think Chinese and English are the totally different type of language. Not only for Kaiyi, semantics is also hard me when I was first learning English. According to Wright "the study of the meaning of words, phrases, and sentences," (Wright, 2015, p.33) Sorry I have to steal your quote for this. Even for me right now whenever I write the paper, I must to recheck and reread my sentences, because the sentence structure and word phrases are so different in Chinese compared to English. I also use Grammarly to check my grammar for my writing.
They absolutely are! They are profoundly different! Semantics are rough especially in a language like English. I am not extremely familiar with Chinese, though I have a moderate understanding of Japanese and I know that Chinese also uses its own form of Kanji, like Japanese. Kanji is so different than our semantics. While our language has so many words with the same spelling, or the same pronunciation, but different meanings, Kanji each have their own singular meanings. This aspect alone, I think, makes the two languages very difficult to transition between. I think it's great that you have resources that help you with enhancing your writing!
DeleteHello, Fei Zhao!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your blog post because it was very honest and realistic because not everyone has good second language acquisition experiences. Something that is really unfortunate is that you all did not feel the confidence to practice your language skills. This means that you all were not able to reach communicative competence until later in life, since you did not truly know it (Wright, 2015, p.36). Wright (2015), also addresses what research has proven, which is that "interaction is essential for SLA to occur" (p.53).
Wright, W. E. (2015). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice. Philadelphia: Caslon Publishing.
Hi Nadia
DeleteThank you for watching my blog, I'm glad that you enjoyed it. I fell as an ELL learner we will all feel the same way when we are first learning a new language. It's hard to build up the confidence to speak up in the language we just learned. ELL learner often fell embarrassed when they speak poorly in the 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).
Hello Fei,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your video, and for Kaiyi's part. It was a very insightful in how such a different language in comparison to English can cause for difficulties in learning English its self. What I found to be interesting was that Kaiyi stated that his teachers gave him prompts that did not really click with him, but teachers should be aware of their ELLs backgrounds" (Wright, 2015). This shows that perhaps those teachers also did not take into consideration the backgrounds of their other students as well.
Crystal M.