Entry 2: Interview with a Second Language Learner




I chose to interview my friend from Montreal, Emile. While it may seem strange to choose someone who is not from the United States, I wanted to choose to interview someone from an area where I may possibly teach in the future. More than that, since I have begun to learn about Montreal, I have become interested with their interesting take on second language acquisition education. Some of the schools in Montreal have students learn and practice French at first, and then as they reach higher grades, English is included into class at an exponential rate. By the end of a student's high school career, they are fluent in English. 

This approach allows students to constantly practice English in a formal setting, similar to Emile being an instructed learner (Ortega, 2013, pg. 6). However, Emile was lucky enough to be able to practice English at home as well, since his family speaks English, which allowed him to also be considered a naturalistic learner (Ortega, 2013, pg. 6). 

To contribute to Emile' English, he definitely had a lot of motivation. Ortega mentions certain antecedent’s that help to motivate certain English learners and based on Emile's interview, I can see how these may apply to him. Emile has the antecedent motivations of social support, inter-group contact, and self-confidence using the language. With the support of Emile’s family, I know that he had the motivation to belong to his family, which included speaking another language, especially since it is so integrated into their culture. Inter-group contact motivated Emile as it is defined as the “potential and actual contact as well as how those experiences are remembered as positive of negative by the learners” (Ortega, 2013, pg. 189). When Emile mentioned playing videogames with his friends who only spoke English, it gave him the opportunity to not only practice English, but since he was having fun and communicating with his friends, it gave him a positive experience using the language, one which he would want to replicate when possible. Lastly, Emile’s motivation of self-confidence when using the language was evident when he mentioned that one of his motivations for learning English and constantly improving comes from his self-determination to improve and speak more fluently.

Based on these answers, I am impressed with the unique education system and culture of Montreal. Emile was able to become a naturalistic and instructed learner, and I believe this has greatly benefited him, especially with how fluent he is in English despite it being his second language.

Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 25, 2018 at 4:34 AM

    Hi Chelsea! I thought it was interesting that your friend that you interviewed talked about what differences he noticed between French and English while he was first learning to speak English, such as how “hair” is singular in English and in French it is plural. Ortega describes that “research comparing similarities and differences between language pairs” became known as “Contrastive Analysis” and it was hypothesized that this would help “predict when negative transfer will occur” (2013, p. 31). In the case of your friend, Emile, he struggled with this type of transfer. I also like how you drew the connection of how your friend would be considered both a naturalistic and instructed learner since he learned English at school, but he also has friends who speak English, and this helps him practice his L2.

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    Replies
    1. UnknownOctober 7, 2018 at 8:13 PM

      Hi Krystal,

      You bring up an interesting point that I had also been thinking about when conducting the interview. Emile has learning some grammatical rules that he does not understand at first and it confuses him, which makes it a negative transfer. However, I think this may be because he uses "thinking-for-speaking." which "refers to the fact that languages offer specific sets of resources to frame meaning, or to schematize experience" (Ortega, 2013, p.47). Since he spoke French first, his mindset is stuck with French grammatical rules and schema, which makes him create grammatical errors because when he is translating phrases in his head, he is thinking of them in French first.

      Delete
  2. Michelle LamSeptember 30, 2018 at 10:38 AM

    Hey Chelsea, it was interesting to hear the perspective of Emile with his English development. Even though he had opportunities to speak to his family in English at home, his greatest motivation was communicating with his online friends. According to Composition 3, “friends have the biggest influence on each other” (Gass & Slinker, 2008, p. 117). When society brings up the topic of peer pressure, we usually associate this as a negative matter. I don’t think Emile ever felt pressured to speak English, because it sounded like he was more self-motivated to communicate with his friends. I like that he is able to continue his English development through his hobbies.

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    Replies
    1. UnknownOctober 7, 2018 at 8:19 PM

      Hi Michelle,

      I agree with you and think that one of Emile's greatest motivations to speak English is the friendships he has developed with native English speakers. With this in mind, his current Orientation, or reason for learning English at the moment, is that he has fostered "general friendship with members of the target language" (Ortega, 2013, p. 173). However, I think that this is a new Orientation for him and I would say that his original one was "instrumental when pragmatic and utilitarian reasons are important, such
      as getting a better job or pursuing a higher level of education in the L2" (Ortega, 2013, p.173). While he was not focused on receiving a job while growing up, he was definitely focused on progressing to the next grade, which was dependent on him learning English.

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  3. Angela HoangOctober 7, 2018 at 11:16 AM

    Hi Chelsea! It was interesting to learn that some schools in Montreal have the students learn in French and introduce English in the higher grades. Your friend, Emile, mentioned that his reasons for learning English were because he was interested in it and that it was a really popular language. As a result, no matter where you travel, everyone can understand you. According to Ortega (2013, p. 173), “there are five orientations for learning a language”, which include the instrumental orientation, knowledge orientation, travel orientation, friendship orientation, and integrative orientation. I believe that Emile has the knowledge, travel, and friendship orientations because he wanted to become more knowledgeable of English, use it when he travels to other countries, and foster friendship with people who speak English. Overall, I enjoyed watching your interview with Emile!

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    Replies
    1. UnknownOctober 7, 2018 at 8:25 PM

      Hi Angela,

      I completely agree with your choices for the Emile's Orientations. I would argue that some of them have come and gone as he has grown older and created more friendships. I would add on that another important aspect to look at when addressing an individuals motivation to learn an L2 is their attitude. Ortega defines an individual's attitude as "collective values, beliefs, attitudes and even behaviours that are rewarded and modelled for the learner in the communities in which he or she participates" (Ortega, 2013, p.174). Based on what I learned from Emile, it would seem that he had a fantastic attitude towards learning English because it was well integrated into his academics and family life. Everyone around him was learning English and it seemed to be a norm and an expectation.

      Delete

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