Interview: For my interview , I decided to meet up with one of my close friend , Nebil Adam . Nebil is currently enroll at the University of Houston . His major is Management information system (MIS) and he is planning to graduate sometime soon. Nebil comes from a very well know country located in East Africa . The country is Ethiopia . Nebil spent his early childhood learning,Amharic, a language that spoken across Ethiopia. This language became his primary language. He did not fully grasp the English language until he was in 5th grade. Nebil and his family migrated to U.S , when he was just 8 years old .Prior coming to the U.S , Nebil shared some great life experience stories with me. I learned that he attend school in Ethiopia . During the interview , he described the similarities and difference between America and Ethiopia school . Nebil was exposed to English at young age . He described to me that his English teacher was native English speaker. With many memories fading away , he remembered being exposed to grammar and vocabulary at young age . He described the teacher using picture to connect meaning. He believe that strategy has help him a lot even when he arrived to the U.S. He was placed in ESL but quickly was removed within year . According to Ortega , " Knowledge of the L1 can often have a positive impact on the rate of L2 learning ( Ortega 2013 , pg 44)". I think having such great fundamental of his primary language has helped in some way to grasp English at a faster rate . Nebil strongly believe that he still fluent with both languages . The interesting thing he told me that he might not have noticed. At home,they blend English with Amharic to communicate with each other sometimes. He feel more comfortable teaching in English rather than Amharic. After the interview , we shared sometime talking about how ages can play a role to learning a new language . We both argued that Ortega's Idea to be inaccurate . Both of us , learned and developed the language at much faster rate than both of our parents ( Ortega 2013 ).
