Briony Furness

Teaching and Learning 333

September 26, 2016

I interviewed Sarah. She is from Indonesia and is 20 years old. I learned that
Sarah began learning English when she was just seven years old. She began to read
and write in first grade with the help of “special teachers.” She told me that the best
way for her to learn English was to be immersed in it in the classroom. Sarah talked
about how being around English so much in elementary school is what helped her
learn it best. She talked about how she had help from a special teacher once or twice
a week during the day. She said that she wished she had more additional help in
school. She said one-on-one help was more beneficial for her than help from her
teacher when the teacher was trying to balance all of the students and their needs. I
asked about how much help she had at home learning English and she said that she
helped her parents with English because when she was learning it they only knew
the basics and she helped them become fluent. The pronunciation of words and the
word order was the most difficult thing about learning English for her. She said this
because it is all so different than what she was used to. Her parents were very
encouraging of her learning English and she got motivated to learn English in order
to make friends in her classroom. In fact, encouragement was the most beneficial
thing to Sarah in her process of learning English. She said that being cheered on in a
way by her teachers and family helped her do the best she could in order to learn
English.
I believe second language teaching is helping students learn a new language
by using strategies that will be beneficial to them and help them feel confident with
their English skills in the long run. Based on the responses from my interviewee I
learned that encouragement and one-on-one help are two crucial things to help an
ELL succeed in learning English. In our class discussions many people that share talk
about positivity in the classroom and helping their ELL students by encouraging
them to do their best and to praise them when they deserve to be. Sarah talked
about how the sentence structure is different in different languages. We talked
about syntax in class and how it can be very difficult for students to learn a new
language that has sentences that are set up in a completely different way than in
their native language.
Interview Questions

1. When did you first begin to learn English?

2. When were you able to read and write in English?
3. What did (or what do you wish) your teachers do in order to help you
learn English?
4. Did you have the appropriate amount of help in school when you needed
it?
5. Did you have a lot of support at home?
6. What was the most difficult thing about learning English?
7. Did your parents know English when you were learning it?
8. What is the language spoken in your home?
9. Was it hard to make friends when you were learning English?
10. Do you like being bilingual?
11. What do you think language is?
12. What do you think language is used for?
13. What components do you think make up a language?
14. Are these components the same for all languages?