Hello,
Today I had the opportunity to interview Sara Gil who's primary language is Spanish and learned English as a secondary language she is considered a ELL. To see more of our interview please click on the link below.
https://youtu.be/7-GAHr_yllI
Reflection:
Sara, was introduced into the English language when she initiated elementary school. She was placed in an ESL program to help her transition form her primary Spanish language to English. Just like many ELL students out there her transition was not easy. She faced some challenges with pronunciation and at times spelling, she shared with me that at time she would be embarrassed about her accent because some words in English were difficult to pronounce correctly. As Wright states in his book that English speaking children knows about 6,000 words by the end of grade 2, yet ELLs only have about 2,000 words (Wright, 2015, pg. 35). ELLs have a major gap to fulfill compare to their peers. I believe that Sara would sometimes feel she need a little more practice to communicate properly and to speak with the proper words to be understood. She also stated that her teachers were very patient and took the time to teach them in various ways such as visuals, charts, songs to reinforce English. It definitely required her to practice more outside of school to get her to where she is now. She now use English more than Spanish, but has not forgotten about her primary language, it is important to embrace bilingualism, English is the dominant language in the United States but our founding fathers embraced the diversity (Wright, 2015. pg. 68). Sara keeps using Spanish daily, she even helps translate documents and is able at the same time to communicate in English, thanks to the educators that took their time to teach her with the different learning skills.
Wright, W. E. (2015). Foundations for teaching English language learners: research, theory, policy, and practice. Philadelphia: Caslon Publishing.
