Entry 2: Interview with an English Language Learner
I interviewed a close friend of mine, Karla Olivo-Trevino, who learned English as her second language. She does not remember exactly what age she began learning English, but recalls being rather young when she started speaking another language aside from Spanish. Growing up her household spoke both languages. Her older sibling is also bilingual and her parents wanted them to know English because of their school. Because of this, Karla feels she was comfortable speaking both languages by the time she reached first grade. Gass and Selinker describe this as a balanced bilingual, which is having the mastery on two different languages (Gass and Selinker, 2008, p. 27). In my interview with Karla, I learned that it was a rather easy transition for her in school because a lot of her knowledge on both languages was learned at home through her family and friends. Rather than receiving most of her instruction of the English language fro...
