SLAMusesAlyaFall18

For this week's blog, I interviewed Mrs. King, a second grade bilingual teacher at Don Jeter Elementary. Click here to view it! Interviewing Mrs. King was very interesting. She is the type of instructor that always makes an effort to make her lessons relevant, hands on, and engaging for her students. As I was interviewing her, I learned that although her students all speak Spanish as their first language, they still come from many different contexts which affects their exposure to the English language. Some of Mrs. King’s students were born and raised in America but their parents only speak Spanish and therefore that is what they grew up hearing in their homes. Other students have just recently moved to the states and have had little to no exposure to English speaking individuals.             In our textbook, Ortega talks about research conducted on school children that are learning a second language ...

For this week's blog, I decided to interview my father. Click here for the link to the video! Entry 2 Reflection: For this interview, I decided to interview my father who is from Mombasa, Kenya. Before reading some of Gass and Selinker’s text, I never exactly labeled my father under the term "bilingual." As a matter of fact, I never even knew that English was not spoken to him at home and it was not until pre-school that he learned the language. After gaining some background knowledge, I would classify my father as an early bilingual, which is, "someone who has acquired two languages early in childhood" (Gass & Selinker, 2008, pg. 27). Although my father's family spoke primarily Kiswahili in the household, his pre-school's requirement of speaking, reading, and writing in English greatly contributed to the success of his proficiency in the language. It also helped that he moved to the states at the age of 17 and began his undergradu...

Alya Muses's Blog Welcome to the first entry of my blog! Click here for the link to my introduction video.