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Entry 4

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This Second Language Acquisition class has given me new insight and a completely different mindset on second language teaching and learning. A lot of different topic and theories were given and introduced during this course and I believe that every single one of them are important in their own way when dealing with second language acquisition. Lourdes Ortega does a great job in her book Understanding Second Language Acquisition, to help explain the many theories in this course and explain them in ways where people that are brand new to this topic can understand easily. A very simple yet interesting topic in this course was the differences of naturalistic learners and instructed learners in the field of second language acquisition. Ortega explains naturalistic learners as people who “learn the L2 through informal opportunities in multicultural neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces, without ever receiving any organized instruction…” (Ortega, pg. 6) On the other hand, instructional l...
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Post 3

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Hello everyone! For this assignment, my reflection and post will be a little different from what it would normally be. After submitting my original assignment, I was contacted by Dr. Avellaneda and he told me my interview was done incorrectly. When I should've asked questions about the student's journey through second language acquisition and learning, I made the mistake of focusing how the instructor teaching and not focusing on theology. This class is not about instructor teaching, but about second language acquisition theology and making connections between theory and real life. The biggest confusion that I had was in motivation theory because of how I was looking at the teacher's point of view and what the teacher does to motivate their students rather than the student's point of view and what motivates them. Ortega states that motivation "is usually understood to refer to the desire to initiate L2 learning and the effort employed to sustain it... " (Ort...
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Entry 2: Interview with my friend Kiri!

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Hello everyone, For this Vlog assignment, I interviewed my good friend Kiri, who I went to high school with and she also goes to the University of Houston. She was born in Yangon, Myanmar and she came to the United States of America at the age of five years old. So according to Ortega, her first language (L1) would be Burmese and her second language (L2) would be English because of how she says a child's first language learns "from the womb to up to four years." (Ortega, 2013, pg. 5) Kiri states in the video that she is a both a naturalistic learner and a instrutionalistic learner. Ortega defines that naturalistic learners “learn the L2 through informal opportunities in multicultural neighborhoods, school, and workplaces…” (Ortega, 2013, pg. 6) and a instructional learner is someone that learns “through formal study in school or university, through private lessons and so on.” (Ortega, 2013. Pg. 6) Kiri started learning and building a foundation of her L2 of English thr...
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Entry 1: Course Introduction

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Entry One: Introduction About Me Hello!  안녕하세요! My name is Houjun Jeon and I am a current Senior at the University of Houston. I am a Psychology major and an Education minor. Although I am not currently in a teaching certification program, I do look to go back into school once I graduate to pursue my teaching degree! I hope to become a middle or high school teacher, teaching either English, ESL, or high school level Psychology.  Ortega mentions in his textbook that "In some parts of the world, most children grow up speaking one language only" and fortunately enough, I am actually the opposite part that can speak more than one. As seen in my introduction video, I am fluent in both English and Korean. I moved to the United States ate the age of 3 and grew up here ever since. I learned English through school and continued learning my Korean at home because my parents only spoke Korean during the beginning years of living here. This is described in the book as being ...
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