Entry 2: Interview with a Bilingual Speaker
For this entry, I decided to interview my friend, Suzette Balderas, a recent graduate from the University of Houston. She was born in Houston, but her parents were born in Mexico, so this influenced her language learning. Her native language is Spanish, but she began learning English, her L2, when she was about four or five years old while she was in preschool. She states that since she started learning her L2 at such a young age, it helped to build her proficiency because it is easier to learn things as a child than when you are older. According to Ortega, “the hypothesis of a critical period for L1 acquisition, and as a corollary for L2 acquisition…continues to be considered plausible today” (2013, p. 12). One of the methods that helped Suzette learn her L2 was through cartoon shows on television. In her interview, she mentions that in the Dora the Explorer cartoon in the American version, the viewers are taught Spanish vocabulary words; however, in the Spanish version, the view...