Second Language Interview

Interview Reflection

 I was given the opportunity to discuss with Hasham Kahn his experience with learning English as a second language. Hasham's experience with English at school in Dubai was not very effective with all of teachers having an Arab background and not being well educated in English, therefore they were not able to answer a lot of questions that he had about English. Hasham has always been an eager learner and wanted to go beyond the class's scope and became as proficient in English as could be, but due to his teachers being bound to a strict curriculum and not having enough extra time to help him grow further in the language, he was not very fluent in English before moving to Canada at the age of 15.  He was hindered by own inadequate education and lack of proper resources. Most of English he learned before coming to Canada at the age of 15 was from speaking it at home with his parents, whose fluency extended to only basic English, and the American films he liked to watch.
         After living in Canada for the past 9 years and being exposed to English full time in his high school curriculum, as well as all the people he interacted with on a daily basis, including friends, teachers, and his host family he lived with, he was able to become fluent in English. He did struggle quite a bit within the first year or two with his confidence due to not be able to communicate his thoughts effectively from a lack of extensive vocabulary and confidence. He mentioned later after our interview about being in ESL for the first two year because although he understand and spoke English at a basic level, being in high school required a deeper, more complex comprehension of English for learning the more sophisticated topics and concepts in the various subjects. One of his biggest struggles was with semantics, which pertains to comprehending the meaning of a phrase or sentence by understanding each individual word. However, he has overcame this and is now very confident in his ability to articulate his thoughts clearly and easily. Now he actually considers himself more fluent in English than his native Language Arabic. According to some researchers, syntax is not bounded by critical period. The brain activity during brain scans in late learners of a second language versus early bilingual learners and monolinguals do not differ (Ortega, 2014).
 He does still sometimes finds himself switching between the two languages in the middle of the conversation or using specific words in Arabic when speaking English and vice versa. He remembers this occurring even when he was younger due to learning and speaking dual languages simultaneously.  According to the unitary hypothesis theory, the blend of two languages in a child's speech is because the child does not yet recognize that the two languages are two separate unity. This theory was proved moot by others like Redlinger and Park, who associate the interchange of both languages to a limited exposure of vocabulary in both languages, so when a child is at a loss for the proper word to explain their thoughts in one language they use their knowledge from their other language to make up for it (Rowald, 2014).
When asked if he had started learning English at a later age, would it have affected his ability to learn English, he discussed how acquisition at an early age is better for your fluency. However, our textbook says that this not necessary true. On the one hand, their is evidence of a process called myelination, which occurs between 10 and 12 years of age, where the white matter that encloses the brain develops to safe guard your nerves and allows for a more swifter transfer of information across the neural pathway. However, the different levels of motivation and types of social environment of adults verses children can also play a role in the distinction between early learners and late learners. Their is no absolute proof that biology is correlated to the acquisition of language, in the sense that there is no empirical evidence that proves a critical period truly exists. There are so many factors to consider to be able to pin it down solely to biology (Ortega, 2014). I believe that despite the inadequate instruction he grew up with in Dubai, his motivation, dedication, and positive environment later in life with his peers and teachers through high school and college have allowed him to successfully become fluent in English despite it being his second language.