Senior blog reflection

(1) Positive Statement
I'm most proud of my overall content of my presentation because I feel like I had very solid information about linguistics n and answers to my EQ.

(2) Questions to Consider

a.     What assessment would you give yourself on your Block Presentation (self-assessment)
AE    

b.     What assessment would you give yourself on your overall senior project (self-assessment)
AE    

(3) What worked for you in your senior project?
I think taking a class at Cal-Poly for my independent component 1 really worked because it gave me a great foundation for my senior project.

(4) (What didn't work)
I wish I would have been able to do mentorship with both my mentors through your my entire senior year instead on switching of mentorships. However doing two mentorships gave me two aspects for my answers to my EQ.

(5) Finding Value
Senior project has helped my solidify my majors in college as linguists and computer science. It also has given me an excilent linguistic foundation to build off of. When I went to Calday at Berekeley I was able to talk to the linguists and understand their lingo.

Blog 21 Mentorship

Contact: Jennifer Tsia Mt. Sac Community College (626) 321-1888

·   Interpretive
     What is the most important thing you gained from this experience? Why?

The most important thing I gained from this experience was to be able to see all the theories and studies I read about at work in a classroom environment. This was important because first semester I learned about second language acquisition theories, but reading about them and understanding them are two different animals. By completing my mentorship in a second language classroom enviroment I was able to see how these different factors of language acquisition were affecting students studying a second language. For example I learned about how an affective filter can prevent learners from acquiring a second language because it hinders there ability to fully grasp concepts. In the German II class during mentorship there is a very shy boy that doesn't ask questions and therefore he isn't getting input. He has a very high affective filter that is affecting his acquisition process.

   Applied
     How has what you've done helped you to answer your EQ?  Please explain.

My mentorship has helped me answer my EQ because it first gave me the foundation to be able to come up with my EQ then it gave me real world examples of my answers to my EQ. My mentorship also helped me determine my best answer. It did this by giving me real life examples of textbook theories. For example motivation and age are all factors that can be seen in the classroom. Especially with the foreign students I can hear their accents in both English and German, but I can also tell that they have high levels of intrinsic motivation. This helped me get my best answer because although their motivation was high they already have passed the critical period and therefore will be unable to produce certain characteristics that someone that started learning German at a younger age may be able to produce.