Juanita's Space

Reflection # 9

2007-06-26T11:29:00.000-07:00

Discuss the role of emotional language in your L1 and L2. Which language is emotionally richer. As your learners acquire (participate?) in their new speech communities do you see a change in their emotional language behavior. Reflect on the notion of (re)construction of delft in your own L2 or L3 learning experiences.

What I can say about the emotional language in my L1 and L2 is that for me, my L1 is emotionally richer than my L2 for obvious reasons.
Again, what I know about me, is that it is easy to express my emotions as happiness or anger in L1 because I feel it more genuine and understandable of what I want to express. For instance, if I get mad with somebody, I do not even know how to respond or defend myself because of the use of the language. Until now I have not been in a situation of "fight" for a particular reason, but I am sure that maybe I will use first my L1 to say everything that I want, and then I will use L2 to explain my points to the person.
According to what we reviewed in class, it is understandable for must of the people speaking more than one language, that their emotional language will be their L1 in most of the cases.
Juanita A.

Reflection # 8

2007-06-21T15:28:00.000-07:00

Reflection # 8
Okay. What is it going to be form-focused or communicative or a combination of both. Back up your thoughts with some of the studies in LS Ch. 6

What I understood when I read the study # 22 that was about ESL learners in Australia in different patterns of pair interactions, is that students interactions could be based on their cognitive development. And they used their prior learning knowledge ( in L2) to interact with their partner. As a result, their interaction led them to different opportunities to learn from others' knowledge learning.
Then, in other simple words, ESL students (specially children) are always arranged to learn something new, and we as teachers must be ready to prepare strategies and to promote situations where the student have the opportunity to develop their linguistic skills. Teachers need to considerate individual characteristics and needs of students in order to adapt the content instruction for them.

Reflection # 7

2007-06-15T07:06:00.000-07:00

From your experience, what are some of the affective factors that you encounter in your classrooms? How do they interfere in learning?How do lower the affective filter? Many of you work with children. What are some of the issues concerning motivation with children? How do address motivation in the classroom? Can you motivate them or does motivation come from within?

According about what we read and what we review in class, extroversion and inhibition, are affective factors, that more influence in the classroom. A classroom is a small society, with people from different cultural background, beliefs, and characteristics that determine the style of learning of each student and the learning strategies the teacher implement.
An extrovert student most of the cases help to maintain an active class, because they participate, and motivate others to learn from them, on the contrary, inhibited students tend to be more quiet, they do not intervene in class or with their classmates because they are shy.
On the other hand, motivation in class works in many ways. For instance, the teacher attitude toward the class or toward some theme or topic, students attitude toward class or activities, and the most important one, the student's intrinsic motivation. Because as teacher we do not always know what is in their heads or family matters that are affecting children's motivation.
Finally, addressing motivation, is not an easy aspect to deal with, but we need to try to find ways to activate a positive intrinsic or extrinsic motivation in the students.
Juanita A.

Reflection # 6

2007-06-12T20:59:00.000-07:00

Culture is a big aspect in today's education. Schools are full of diverse students from different backgrounds, experiences, traditions, beliefs, language, ideologies, and so on. I had the experience to share with children of Pre-K 4 and Pre-K 3 in bilingual classrooms. I noticed that the Hispanic kids were more affective and socials than the other kids in the class, maybe because the second group belongs to American race, and some of them were influenced by religious issues.
In one of my other past classes I read a Ronald Takaki book, A Different Mirror, where he clearly explains these issues of culture and identity. He discuss the topic how the teacher needs to integrate students from different ethnic groups in classrooms surround them and characterized by a monoculture society. He points out the fact of "how to make students feel part of the society", and "how to value their culture". With this in mind, I think teachers must prepare their students to act as informants of their own culture. Sometimes teachers do not value what students bring to the classroom and, therefore, students neither appreciate themselves nor their family’s culture, leading to a negative image of their own ethnicity.
Educators shall have in mind that students from a variety of cultural backgrounds have challenges with their own identity. Pride and shame are a striking combination these students feel about their culture. For these reasons teachers need to stimulate students to share different topics about their culture, and create activities where the students feel free to participate.

Juanita A.

Reflection # 5

2007-06-12T11:23:00.000-07:00

In chapter 9 the term CAH means the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis. It relates the effects of the Native Language on the L2. At the same time, it discusses that for teachers will be easy to predict difficulties of the Language Learners along their way in acquiring a SL.
On the other hand, Wardhaugh explain the CLI that means Cross-Linguistic Influence, when he explains that CLI is the weak version of the CAH. This term makes an emphasis that the acquisition of language and the learner difficulties of the process deals with influence instead prediction. In other words, during the process of language acquisition learners tend to have errors, which are normal in any process, there is the opportunity for teachers to analyses the language knowledge in L1 or L2 of the learner, to identify the sources of these errors.
About the error analysis, it says that every person make mistakes or errors in their first language, but their are part of their language learning and that in most of the cases learners self-correct them as long they are in contact with people and the environment around them. These mistakes show in most of the cases the performance of the language, while errors show the lack of competence in the language.
For instance, when a person constantly says in Spanish language the word "haiga" instead "haya" or "hacina" instead "así", they are a clear example of errors of the language, it is an issue that maybe interpreted as fossilization, when the learners do not make any changes to correct their language through the time. Juanita A.

Reflection # 2

2007-06-11T17:56:00.000-07:00

The relationship between the Behavioral, Nativist, and Functional approaches is that they are focused in the linguistics abilities that a person posses. They deal with stimulation, construction,responses, and social functions that language learners apply them in order to communicate and learn about the world that is around them.People's capacity to learn linguistics matters and to improve their communication is a result of their interaction with their environment. In my experience learning a second language I do not have the opportunity to develop a nativist approach with all the innate acquisitions. Now I am trying to learn it in a Functional way.About the child-parent interaction, I think there is not any difference, just the language. A child learns, reinforces, and recognizes sounds and messages in the language that he/she is learning.Maybe these interaction will defer from each other in emotional and psychological aspects.

June 6, 2007 7:25 AM

Reflection # 3

2007-06-11T17:55:00.001-07:00

I think my learning style is visual, because I have to read or see objects, pictures, and sometimes words in order to find ways in retaining new information. Teachers have to implement diverse strategies to achieve student learning. Students have different characteristics dealing with specific types of learning styles. The teachers need to expose them to a different kinds of materials for any proposed activity, in order to reach the activity or class objective.About the learners' beliefs, it is possible that most people have their own previous experiences in language learning, and how language instruction should be delivered. These experiences made students or parents aware concerning on what is going to be learned and the learning strategies they have to apply.

June 7, 2007 7:54 PM

Reflection #4

2007-06-11T11:20:00.000-07:00

Researchers are trying to explain with several examples how the second language acquisition can be affected by the CPH. Their theories are diverse because of the individual characteristics of the learners.
For instance, Stengel, Krashen, and Guiora explain that there exist factors such as social and affective relationships that may influence the ability to learn languages.
The individual characteristics of the language learners such as, personality, identity, motivation, aptitude, attitude, among others, are determining factors affecting language learning. There does not exist a formula or theory which can approve or explain the CPH as an absolute truth.
Researchers have their own and different experiences and studies with languages learners, and as a result they can't be agree each other on the Critical Period Hypothesis.
In my case, I started to learn a new language very late. When I officially started the SLA I was 22 yrs. old. Actually it has been very hard for me to learn English, there are too many rules in the language, and everything is backwards as it is used to be in Spanish.
Juanita A.

Welcome

2007-06-05T12:25:00.000-07:00

Hello class,

This is Juanita and I just want to say Hi!!