Environmental Influences on Linguistic Development
This is an interview based group project that is related to multilingualism. In this project, we conducted interviews with people who speak two or more languages and talked to them about their experiences with their languages. Our goal is to explore the effect their environment has on their linguistic development. Here you will see interviewees from a variety of cultures. All these interviews have been uploaded to the DALN (Digital Archive of Literacy Narrative), an online archive of stories which related to literacy. Our website is an exhibition of our interviews, and some more information that can help you better understand them. Hope you enjoy watching the interviews and have a better understanding of how environments shape their linguistic development.
The five interviewees, Adnan Basrai, Cherry Feng, Samantha Flores, Suleman Gillani and Maris A. Rivera speak different first languages and have different experiences of acquiring a second language. But there is one thing they share in common: they all moved into a new environment where their second language is the dominant language, and the new environment played an essential role in their second language development. Their fluency in their second language before they moved varied. While Maria had no any experience of speaking English before she moved to the U.S, Samantha and Mr. Gillani learned a bit of English in language training classes in their hometown. Adnan and Cherry had greater exposure to English before and met less of a language barrier after they moved to the new environment. Despite their differences, their English ability was clearly changed by immersing into an all-English environment. They all admit that their English ability has greatly improved. For their social and academic well-being, they had no choice but to communicate with people in their new environment (in English). Thanks to the daily practice, they speak more fluently, and they learn more about fundamental daily language skills, like slang, that they could not have learned in a classroom setting in their hometown.
The five interviewees, Adnan Basrai, Cherry Feng, Samantha Flores, Suleman Gillani and Maris A. Rivera speak different first languages and have different experiences of acquiring a second language. But there is one thing they share in common: they all moved into a new environment where their second language is the dominant language, and the new environment played an essential role in their second language development. Their fluency in their second language before they moved varied. While Maria had no any experience of speaking English before she moved to the U.S, Samantha and Mr. Gillani learned a bit of English in language training classes in their hometown. Adnan and Cherry had greater exposure to English before and met less of a language barrier after they moved to the new environment. Despite their differences, their English ability was clearly changed by immersing into an all-English environment. They all admit that their English ability has greatly improved. For their social and academic well-being, they had no choice but to communicate with people in their new environment (in English). Thanks to the daily practice, they speak more fluently, and they learn more about fundamental daily language skills, like slang, that they could not have learned in a classroom setting in their hometown.
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The Environmental Influence of One's Linguistic Development by Shaaz Gillani,Wendy J. Rodriguez, Zhentian Shen, Ningxin Zhou is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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