Entry 2: Interview with Cassandra Sarmiento
I interviewed my friend Cassandra Sarmiento. I met Cassandra
circa 2001 and she has always spoken Spanish in my years of knowing her. During
this interview I was able to ask her questions about her second language that I
have never considered in the past.
Her family’s native language was Spanish,
however once they moved to America they learned the language from being
immersed in English and feeling almost forced to learn the language so as not
to be stigmatized for being foreign. Cassandra lived with her grandparents in
El Paso, Texas where she was spoken to only in Spanish until age 4. She lived
with her mother in Houston where she was spoke English with her mother
primarily and says she lost a lot of the language. Then once she got older near
junior high, she would visit her grandparents over the summers and be immersed
once again in Spanish where she was able to quickly pick the language back up
and learn from her Family.
Ortega concludes that “by and large,
learners who begin acquiring the L2 [second language] before a
certain age, which
these studies locate
to be around
puberty, will tend
to exhibit intuitions that
are very close
to those of
native speakers of
that language.” (p. 159) This leads me to
believe that she was able to remain at least conversationally fluent in Spanish
because she learned at a young age and even when she stopped practicing she was
able to regain her fluency at the age of puberty by once again being immersed
in the language. Also, the more she has used Spanish in her professional and
social life the more capable and fluent she has become as well.
Cassandra also
has had some experience with a third language, French. She states that she was
able to grasp a lot of vocabulary, however, she is not fluent in the language.
She did mention that much of the vocabulary was easy to grasp because of the
connection to Spanish via the languages Latin roots. According to Ortega “proficiency
is another factor that must be taken into account, in that L3 learners may be
more prone to transferring aspects of whichever language they are more
proficient in, and they will gradually show different cross linguistic sources
of influence as their L3 proficiency increases.” (p. 50)I think this
relates to her experiences with attempting a third language because her
proficiency in Spanish was able to help her acquire some of the words used in
the French language.
All in all, it is apparent that Cassandra’s experience and
immersion in English in school and Spanish with her family has helped her
acquire both languages enough to be successful and use both languages to her
advantage.
Ortega, Lourdes. Second Language Acquisition. London: Routledge,
2011. Print.
Hi Amber! It was interesting to hear that your friend Cassandra's experience with her native language affected acquiring a new language, French. She related a lot of the French vocabulary with Spanish, showing transfer. She is using one language to help her in another, which like you said is verified in Ortega's book.
ReplyDeleteYes, I was surprised to hear that French and Spanish shared cognate words. Although, as Ortega (2011) states on pages 34, "L1 transfer cannot radically alter the route of L2 acquisition." Which is apparent because she was not able to become competent in the language even after formal instruction and transferring from both English and Spanish. I wonder if she were to begin practicing French again if it would be more difficult or easier to learn.
DeleteHey Amber,
ReplyDeleteI think it’s really interesting how you interviewed your friend for this assignment. I think Cassandra had an experience that a lot of people go through. I think Cassandra was very good at Spanish because she was fully immersed in an environment where Spanish was spoken regularly and that has a big impact on her language skills (Why Is Learning a New Language Harder After Childhood, 2010). Even though she would leave the environment, when she would come back it was easy for her to recall the language. I was wondering, do you think if she was to be gone for longer periods of time would she be able to pick the language back up as quickly? Great video!
Hey amber,
ReplyDeleteFrom what I heard the main difficulty for your friends family was the pressure to conform to the new life style and culture that they were all forced to live by all of a sudden. When your friend was learning french, you mentioned about cognates. Cognates are really useful in many ways because of the way we tend to transfer our previous knowledge of our L1 into our L2 ortega (2013). This makes learning new vocabulary easier in some languages because they share a common origin such as latin. The same is true for other languages that share a similar origin such as Japanese, Chinese and Korean.