Entry Three

 https://youtu.be/xPjersRF6rM
ELL students vocabulary 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. The 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 interviewee about the students motivation she explains that she always tells her ELL students that they are very special for knowing two languages and when students are motivated and excited to learn,they tend to do excellent work. Being an ELL student can be very difficult  and frustrating because the student ultimately wants to be able to grasp the lesson and learn just like everyone else but it takes them a little bit longer and that's when motivating your students comes in so that they will keep trying until they become proficient. Ortega states that "recent strands of research suggest that a number of environmental  opportunities for exposure and use of high-quality L2 input and amount and quality of L1 use and socio-affective factors such as motivation, L2
instruction and overall education may mutually interact and become important predictors of success at earlier as well as later starting ages.

Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 17, 2018 at 4:26 PM

    Hi Katiana.
    My sister had a similar experience to Ms. Garcia as a child. My sister needed the support of a speech therapist when she first enrolled in school, and her experience has inspired her to pursue speech pathology.
    Ms. Garcia goes on to say that many ELLs go one to surpass their monolingual counter parts, which is supported by the data collected from state assessments and overall grades. She also admits that English is her dominant language at the moment due to her not speaking Spanish as often. According to Ortega, “…the more [language] knowledge is accessed via practice, the easier it will become to access it …”

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  2. UnknownOctober 20, 2018 at 8:52 PM

    Hello Katiana,

    I think that is great that Ms. Garcia focuses on motivating students and giving them a reason to want to learn a new language. If students are not motivated to learn, their learning will not reach its fullest potential. “In addition to the reasons that cause people to want to learn an L2, attitudes towards the L2 and its speakers will contribute to increase or diminish L2 motivation” (Ortega, 2011, p. 174). By Ms. Garcia sharing the benefits of being bilingual to her students, she is increasing their motivation to not only learn English, but to also continue practicing their L1. Keeping that positive attitude about the students L2 will help them in learning their new language.


    Ortega, Lourdes. Second Langauge Acquisition. London: Routledge 2013, print.

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    Replies
    1. Katiana MunroOctober 23, 2018 at 8:30 PM

      Hello Tori,
      I agree that motivating your students is probably one of the thing that you should always do to your students and especially to your ELL's. Majority of them already has to adjust to learning a new language and it just makes it easier on them if there teacher supports them and is always being very positive. According to Ortega, SLA researchers emphasize general socio-educational and motivational factors in connection to age effects on L2 learning.

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    2. Lawrence EkekeOctober 28, 2018 at 7:36 AM

      Hi Katiana,

      As a teacher, you are perceived as a very significant person in your student's lives. They look up to you for a number of different reasons. That is why showing support and being motivational instruments for them to feed off of is so important. Ortega states on p.172 that social support from significant others such as parents, siblings, peers, and teachers can thrust a change that creates rewards and reinforcements that may be important in boosting motivation. Students want to know that someone is in their corner rooting for them.

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  3. Priscilla SambranoOctober 22, 2018 at 5:49 PM

    Hi Katiana,

    I took some interest in the part when your interviewee discussed about how some of her students who are advanced high, tend to struggle with "speaking," more-so than comprehension, the most. Based on the readings, I learned that this could be due to students using what Ortega calls, "Thinking-for-speaking." Ortega best describes thinking-for-speaking as being the fact that languages offer specific sets of resources to frame meaning, or to schematize experience, and speakers are known to be constrained by such language-specific ways at the time when they are putting together their thoughts into language (Ortega, 2013, p. 47)." In other words, it seems that the ELL's who are having trouble executing that speaking portion of their L2 development could be the result of still trying to directly transfer their thoughts from their L1 into their L2. Those students are findings themselves transferring their thoughts in the same language structure as their L1 to their L2. It may not be the case that all students could be doing this, but it some small way this could be the cause as to why ELL's struggle the most with the speaking portion of their L2 development. This kind of makes me wonder if that is why I tend to sometimes struggle trying to get my thoughts across to my L2 because I am deriving the language structures from my L1. Same goes for trying to communicate into my L1. Sometimes I also find myself struggling trying to communicate with my family members from Mexico because I'm trying to transfer the language structures from my L2 into my L1. I really do wonder if that could be the case.

    Great Video!
    Priscilla Sambrano

    References: Ortega, Lourdes. Second Language Acquisition. London: Routledge, 2013. Print.

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  4. Audrey UraihOctober 23, 2018 at 9:29 PM

    Ms. Garcia shared a lot about being an ESL coach and her responsibilities. She manages the administration of the annual TELPAS test for ELLs. She shared that the test assesses the realms of reading, writing, listening, and speaking English. However, when it comes to speaking, she recognized that some students had tremendous difficulty with speaking in English, although they were successful in the other assessed dimensions. According to research referenced in Ortega (2009), “The stress of the situation made a noticeable impact on introverted, but not extraverted, speakers. Specifically, there was suggestive evidence that, under stressful conditions, the introverted participants achieved higher lexical richness and more explicit language but at the expense of engaging in more hesitation-marked lexical searches and in more disfluency” (p. 198). This difference in personality introversion/extroversion does not have a proven correlation as one or the other being more advantageous for second language learning. However, this facet of personality may attribute to some of the oral presentation qualities explained by Ms. Garcia. Ortega (2009) reinforces the notion of possible test anxiety, “If the threat is unmanageable and anxiety rises, it will contribute to these students’ poor performance in situations where they feel evaluated and anticipate failure” (p. 201). Another explanation for the behavior Ms. Garcia described, performing competently in reading, writing, and listening, but not speaking, may be individual’s efficacy in monitoring their own linguistic productions. According to Ortega (2009), “Monitor underusers tend to be overly focused on communication to the point of miscalculated risk-taking L2 behaviour, whereas monitor overusers tend to be overly mindful of accuracy to the point of anxiety or reticence” (p. 198). It is also important to mention that, although monitor overusers have trepidation with inaccuracy, they are not proven to produce more grammatically accurate communication than their monitor underuser counterparts.

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  5. Brianna BaxterOctober 24, 2018 at 10:15 PM

    Katiana –
    It is wonderful that your interviewee likes to tell her ELL students that they are special for speaking two languages. She mentions that if a student is truly motivated to be proficient in the English language, they will achieve proficiency. I believe that this kind of encouragement and motivation may increase the willingness to communicate in a student. Giving affirmations to all students should lower anxiety, but particularly in this case, this kind of positive language most likely lowers anxiety for an ELL and adjust their self-perceived competence. A high self-perceived competence and lower anxiety increases an ELL’s willingness to communicate. Ortega (2013) states that positive or negative feelings of anxiety and competence will be related to the frequency […] to the perceived quality of past L2 contact […], in a pattern where frequency and quality influence each other” (p.203).

    Ortega, L. (2013). Understanding second language acquisition. Routledge.

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  6. RuthfraustoOctober 25, 2018 at 11:48 AM

    Hello Katiana,
    When asked how motivation affects English language learners, Ms. Garcia noted that once they have a reason to be motivated, they excel. The reasons that Ms. Garcia is talking about are called Orientations. As stated by Ortega, Orientations are "reasons for learning the L2, which in turn
    may influence the intensity and quality of motivation of a learner’s experience" (Ortega, 2011, p. 172). Some examples of orientations that English language learners may experience are, wanting to interact with peers, succeed in school, and to assist their parents by translating for them or teaching them the language as well etc.

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