Third Answer

EQ: What is the most important factor in language acquisition for a non-native speaker.

• Proximity of a persons native tongue to the family group of his or her target language is the most important factor in language acquisition for a non-native speaker.
• When languages are in the same family group they share lexicon making lexical acquisition faster. For example German and English are in the same language family (Germanic) and they share words like: Wanderlust, Blitz, Kindergarten
• When languages are in the same family group they share similar syntax. For example Spanish and French are both part of the same language family and therefore have similar syntax like: Subject Verb Object to emphasize the object
• Language family groups can cause positive or negative transfers between the native language and the target language. For example if a Chinese man were trying to speak a Germanic language using Chinese syntax the transfer would be negative. If the same man used his Chinese syntax to speak Cantonese the syntax transfer would be negative.
• The closer a target language is to a persons native tongue the faster they will be able to acquire the target language.

March Post

          I am continuing my mentor ship with Frau Tsia at Mt. Sac helping out and observing the German II class. Frau Tsia is also the German teacher at Claremont High School. She asked me if I would be able to help her create the program for her up and coming Gartenfest German poetry recitation. I accepted the assignment because it would be a good way to look at work of high school students. Up until this point I have really only seen L2 acquisition class work of college students. For the program I helped proof read and format the program. The program contained all the poems that were to be recited in both German and English. My main job besides formatting was to make sure that the German matched the  English. I was able to relate my work doing the proof reading to my possible third answer to my essential question which is language family proximity to ones native tongue. There were a lot of positive and negative lexical transfers within the translations. A lot of the negative transfers had to do with false cognates between German and English. A false cognate is a word that sounds like another word, but has a different meaning. The most frequent false cognate in the translations was the German word "will" (Which means to want to so something) to the English word "will" (Which means that one is going to do something). The Gartenfest occurred on March 13th and my mentor was kind enough to put my name on the program (Pictured Above).

Fourth Interview

Blog 17: Fourth Interview

1. What were your intrinsic motivation to learn your L2?

2. What were your extrinsic motivations to learn your L2?

3. Which motivation intrinsic or extrinsic was most motivational to you?          Why?

4. Did you have any motivation due because you wanted to assimilate into       your target languages society?

5. With the languages you have learned were there any that shared a             language family? If yes/no how did this help or hinder your L2                   acquisition?

6. In what ways did age of acquisition affect the learning of your L2?

7. What were the differences for you between learning a language before     puberty than after puberty?

8. Why do you believe some grammatical concepts were harder to learn        than others?

9. Why do you believe it is harder to learn a language after puberty?

10. How does proximity to the target language speaking group aid to              language acquisition?

11. How did language affect transition from one culture to another?

12. What helps you code switch between languages?

13. What language do you think in and how does that affect your oral              communication?

14. As an immigrant how did assimilation come into play when you were          learning your new countries language?

15. Is one's grammatical judgement better in languages that they learned        at an earlier age?

16. Approximately how long does it take to develop grammatically                    judgement? 

17. How beneficial are lexical transfers between languages that are in the      same language family? 

18. How beneficial are syntactical transfers between languages that are in      the same language family? 

19. What benefits does drill memorization methods have in SLA?

20. What language acquisition method benefited you the most? Why?