Hello Everyone, Welcome to Blog #2, this week I had the
great opportunity to catch up with one of my close friends, Anna volpe. Anna is a twenty-six year old graduate
from UCLA and is currently attending Veterinary school at Cornell University. I
had the chance to sit down and have a video interview about her experiences in the
United States and the process of learning a second language. Both Anna and her brother where born in
Tuscany, Italy but moved to the USA at a very young age. Although their mother,
was born and raised in Tuscany Anna and their family are proud to live in the
USA and aren’t shy of their roots. Anna Jokes about not having much of an
accent but According to Ortega, in terms of L2 ultimate attainment,
most learners who begin acquiring the L2 before a certain age, typically before
puberty or before the school age (kindergarten), the students will develop
levels of morph syntactic and phonological competence that are very close to
those of native speakers of that language (pg. 28). Along with her brother Anna
had the benefit of having a family member whose first language was English (Her
father), she was able to be engulfed in the language early and head into grade
school, with barely a blemish on her English speaking ability. Although her school had a program for non-English
speaking students and bilingual students, Anna was enrolled in in regular
classes, she also noted that her parents brought and ESL tutor to the home for
her and her brother when they where younger, to avoid anxiety and worry about
school and fitting in with their peers. Also according to Ortega, the
antecedents of L2 communicative confidence, which is shown by anxiety and lack
of confidence in the learned language. But through the interview Anna loved to
talk about her experiences and everything in between, she is proud of her
family and the way they’ve evolved and cant wait for the years to come!
heres the video! hope you enjoy it : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUV-Ka78tyg&feature=youtu.be
