Language Learners

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I interviewed a native Mandarin speaker. She moved to America for college about 2 years ago, but she started earning English at the age of three in school. She was taught English by an American when she was 3 years old in Kindergarten. While she started learning English while she was fairly young, she could already read in her native language by the age of 2. She says that she mostly learned English by watching TV shows and movies. She also did activities in books for homework in school that helped her learn English and in elementary school some classes were taught in English, and she had to give presentations in English. She also went to a summer camp in LA in 5th grade and stayed with a host family, but by then she was already fairly fluent …show more content…
She reached level 4 ELL proficiency when she was relatively young, and has reached level 6 proficiency. There are five ELL proficiency levels: Entering, Beginning, Developing, Expanding, and Bridging (Pienkawa, The WIDA Basics). The five language proficiency levels outline the progression of language development in the acquisition of English as an additional language, from 1, Entering the process, to 6, Reaching, the end of the continuum, and they outline the expected performance of ELLS at each level and describe what ELLS can do within each of the language domains for each grade level cluster (Gottlieb). The sixth level is called reaching, when the ELL has exited the ESL program and is comparable to a native speaker. My interviewee is comparable to a native speaker. She is fully functioning as a college student doing college level work, and able to fully analyze, evaluate, infer, and create in English. However, she still has trouble with understanding figures of speech and sarcasm. Idioms are figures of speech, in which the meanings of the phrase do not literally correspond to the words that comprise them and are frequently problems for English Language Learners (Peregoy & Boyle, 47). With sarcasm, people say one thing but mean it’s opposite. For example, when someone says “Oh great!” but they mean “Oh no!” (Peregoy, & Boyle, 47). Even in the context of the conversation, she has trouble …show more content…
When she is at college, she thinks and speaks in English. At home, she thinks and speaks in both languages, depending on what she wants to express and whom she is talking to. When she is by herself, it’s about 50/50 English and Chinese, but maybe slightly more in English. She counts in both languages, but when she wants to count faster, she counts in Chinese. For example, when she’s doing exercises in the gym she counts in Chinese, because she can say those numbers in her head faster. She writes in both languages, but finds it easer to write in English. She finds it easy to switch between both languages. She is comfortable with the mainstream culture because of all of the media she is exposed to. She learns about the culture by watching TV, movies, the Internet, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Keeping up with the Kardashians. Learning English helped her when she moved to the U.S. for college. It was very different from her home, but it helped that she knew the language. One example she gave me was that at home no one wears leggings and tank tops outside, but now she can dress like that all the time. People can wear less clothing and are more acceptable of people of different sizes. At her home, people are mean in to you if you’re not super skinny and super pale. When she is in the United States, she finds that the standards of dress and beauty are more relaxed, which is
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