I enjoyed this experience very much! I interviewed one of my friends, Ashley. I felt like I was able to understand her experience about growing up in America on a much deeper level after interviewing her. She was born in Korea and was adopted by an American family in Houston, Texas. She grew up speaking Korean before she was adopted when she was four years old. According to Ortega, the biological window for children to acquire their complete L1 is between the ages of four-six (Ortega, 2013, p.12). Ashley’s L1 is Korean. The family that she was adopted by only spoke English.
Her experience in an ESL classroom was a very positive experience for her. She seems to have had a great teacher that helped her tremendously throughout her schooling. I feel as if what her teacher did with using blocks with letters on them to teach her how to spell words is a useful strategy to use. I feel that since she did struggle with the concept that one single letter is not a word, like how a single character is a single word in Korean, this helped her to better understand how to spell words in English.
Since Ashley was taken out of her general education classroom to a separate room to work with an ESL teacher she was able to get the personal and effective one-on-one time that she needed. “These teachers/specialists would pull students out of their classrooms a few hours a week and provide our ELLs specialized instruction and support” (Wright, 2015, p. 2). I feel that because Ashley was pulled out as much as she was this also really helped her to learn the language as fast as she did.
I feel that ESL classes are very important for students who are trying to learn the language.
Reference:
Wright, Wayne (2015). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice. Philadelphia, PA: Caston, Second Edition.
