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VBlog 3

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Hi Guys! Welcome to my Vblog 3! For todays interview, I had the honor of interviewing a longtime, childhood friend, Marko Majdandzic (or Mr. Marko, as his students call him).   Mr. Marko is 26 years old, and was born in Croatia. He and his family migrated to the US when he was only four years old. In the in the interview Marko talks about how he did not begin learning English until he was placed in school, and even then he claims to have gotten away with speaking zero English in pre-K. I found it incredibly strange that he was allowed to go on for so long without learning to speak English whilst in school, so I did ask if any of his teachers tried to encourage him to speak English, to which he basically answered by saying that his teachers basically allowed him to feel comfortable in the classroom setting without actually forcing him to try and speak English with his peers. I found this to be incredibly weird, as we have been learning that we should try to e...
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SLA VBlog 2

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Hey Guys! Welcome to my VBlog two. For this VBlog I decided to interview my friend Cristian Servin. Cristian is 25 years old, and was born and raised in Houston, Texas. His parents migrated to the US before he was born, however their household remained pretty Spanish oriented. In this video Cristian talks about how up until the time that he was put in school, he only spoke Spanish at home and even when he was placed in school, he was placed in an ESL class so he never felt too stressed out as opposed to being placed in an all English speaking class where he would have felt very stressed and confused. According to Rowland (2014), “the second pre-requisite we need to acquire language is an environment in which we are exposed to a language.” (p. 16) He believed that because he was placed in an ESL class, it allowed for an easy introduction and transition into the English learning experience. Cristian talks about what his drive for learning English was, and oddly enough he...
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SLA Vblog 1

VBlog One Hey guys! My name is Joanna Flores; I am currently a senior at the University of Houston, so hopefully this May I will be graduating as an EC-6 generalist. I am also currently student teaching at Blackshear elementary, in a 5th grade math classroom and I LOVE it! As mentioned in my video, I grew up in a Spanish-speaking household, which of course meant that I only spoke Spanish until about the age of eight, when I was finally transitioned from a Spanish classroom, to an all English speaking classroom. My biggest motivation at the time was just me wanting to be able to communicate with my teachers and peers. I remember feeling incredibly frustrated at times when I knew what I wanted to say, but had no idea HOW to say it. However after struggling for the first couple of months, I eventually began getting the hang of it and eventually became fluent over time. Ortega (2013) describes my second language experience as "second language acquisition" (p...
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