Language Acquisition Booklet: by Julia Gleason

Teaching Experience:

I taught my younger brother using my booklet at the dinner table because we were

together and not distracted. As I taught my brother about language acquisition, it was interesting

to see that there can even been language problems when teaching someone that speaks the same

language because it is hard to think of the right words to convey a message. However, I was

impressed by how much he understood and was interested in the threshold hypothesis. It made a

lot of sense to him, but we still had questions about words, concepts, and grammar in other

languages that they don’t have in English. I think he struggled a little with the monitor

hypothesis because it is kind of a new idea for him that mistakes can be left alone sometimes. I

think that is because we were raised in an environment that mistakes were typically quickly

corrected. Next time I think if I had more examples the lesson might go more smoothly, or if we

had more personal experience with ELL students. It was a good teaching experience because it

inspired in depth conversations and questions, “like what is a first language technically?” It was

good to have that discussion.