Entry 2: An Interview with an English Language Learner
Hello all and welcome to my second Vblog entry. For today’s entry, I am sharing an interview I had with an English language learner who is very close to me, Fernando Leal, who also happens to be my father. Through the interview, I was able to learn about experiences, both positive and negative, that he was subjected to in the public school system in San Antonio, TX. Fernando was a native U.S. born ELL, as described in Wright Chapter 1 (2019). Were immigrants from Mexico and he and his siblings were first generation Americans. He began school when he was 6 with limited English abilities. The English abilities that he did have was due to his older siblings. In school, Fernando was placed in a general education classroom without any specific language support. Fernando described the excitement he felt with going to school and the intrinsic motivation he had to do well. He spoke about working harder in school to make up for the deficit he had due to language. This wasn’t the case for many o...