For my second entry I decided to
interview my older brother. My brother is two years older than me and was born
in Thailand and came to America around 18-20 months old. I wondered if his experience
growing up was any different than mine just for the fact that he is older than
me and experienced how it was for my parents to immediately come from Cambodia
to America and be amongst the English language. After interviewing my brother and
hearing about his English language learning experience I feel that his
experience was very similar to mine. He grew up only hearing Khmer but heard
English around him, so naturally he was able to pick up English easily through
friends and TV. He was exposed to Khmer and English “within a biological window
of four to six years of age” (Ortega, 2009, p. 12) so learning both Khmer and
English could have been easy just because he was very young. One thing that I
have read that I feel holds very true is that “teachers can only hope to teach
successfully what learners are developmentally ready to learn” which basically
means if the learner is ready to learn they can learn (Ortega, 2009, p. 138).
In my brother’s case, because children naturally want to learn, he was ready to
learn and acquire English. The approach of learning English was through a naturalistic
approach and when he started school he learned English through an Instructional
approach (Ortega, 2009). The neighborhood that we live in was also full of
English language learners from many different backgrounds so not knowing much English
when we were younger did not make us uncomfortable. As my brother stated, half
of the students at the elementary school were English language learners so the
environment was conducive to our learning. At the same time, living in America
you just hear English all around you so it’s understandable why he feels that
being immersed in the language is the way to go when learning another language.
