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Entry 4

Taking this Second Acquisition course helped me understand several ways that students are able to learn a second language. I also got a better understanding of what learning a second language was all about.For my understanding i thought you just practice the language, practice speaking it and eventually it will start to process in your head. I was also able to find out that there are different types of bilingualism. “Bilingualism is a broad term, and like heritage acquisition, has many forms and configurations” (Gass and Selinker 2013, pg. 24). They go on to define several different types of bilinguals later on in the same chapter to further prove that there are in fact several types of bilinguals. This class also made me experience how it is to learn a additional language. As a educator it is up to you to create a warm and comfortable environment in which your child can grow to learn the complexities of language. The communication skills that your child learns early in life will be th...
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Entry Three

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  https://youtu.be/xPjersRF6rM ELL students v ocabulary development is one of the greatest challenges to reading instruction for ELL's, in order to read fluently and comprehend what is written, students need to use not just phonics, but context. It is possible for students to read completely phonetically and not comprehend what they have read because they do not have the vocabulary. According to Ortega (2011) " These general-language coding and processing difficulties emerge most clearly in the areas of phonological awareness".For general language proficiency, bilingual children tend to have a smaller vocabulary in each language than monolingual children in their language. Their understanding of linguistic structure, called meta linguistic awareness. T he acquisition of literacy of proficiency in the second language  skills in these children depends on the relationship between the two languages and the level of proficiency in the second language. When I asked my inter...
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Entry 2: Interview with a..

Hello everyone, For my second video blog I decided to interview my mother Giovanna Arthurs,she was born and raised in Panama and her first language is Spanish, she also learned English as her second language. In the video, my mother mentioned that she learned english natuarally as a child at home with her family whose first language is English. But when she came to the United States at the age of 13 she was placed in ESL classes. Even though she knew english she needed additional help with reading and writing. My mother social enviroment allows her to use her dominant language, which is spanish on a daily basis because she gets the opportunity to interact with speaking people.  As a child my mother grew up in Panama speaking spanish and english at the same time. This idea corresponds to what Ortega (2013) states that "in any parts of the globe, most children grow up speaking two or more languages simultaneously. According to my mother, she believes that it is easier to learn a ...
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Entry 1: Course Introduction

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Katiana Munro's Blog Hello! My name is Katiana Munro, and I am a senior at the University of Houston. My major is teaching and learning with a EC-6 certification. I would love to teach 1st or 2nd grade,knowing that i can make a difference while kids are still young motivates me to become an elementary teacher. I was surronded with spanish around me my whole life, but it wasnt spoken as much for me to learn in my household. My mother and her side of the family speaks fluent in spanish, she is from Panama.She spoke to my brother and I in English most of the times and sometimes she would say some of the the the basic spanish words to us. Ortega mentions in the article, that "A Second language learner needs to learn the grammar." (Ortega,2013). My mother who speaks spanish always have problems in her grammar,For example she may send a email and ask me to look over it just to make sure it sounds correct.Her grammar was not 100%, it was just enough to get her by, so I de...
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