I was able to interview Hieu Thai, he is 22 Years old and his home language is Vietnamese.
Hieu’s family came here from Vietnam 24 years ago to reunite with family that had previously moved to America. Hieu is a manager at Racetrac and a sophomore at Tarrant County Community College where he is studying business management. Once he finishes at TCC, he plans to go to University of Texas at Arlington. He completed kindergarten through twelfth grade as well as his freshman year of college here in Texas. Prior to his education, Hieu didn’t have an exposure to English.
Hieu only attended school here in Texas, so he has no idea if school is different back in Vietnam. When Hieu first began school, he didn’t like it because of the language barrier he was facing. After he learned English and as able to speak with his friends, he then started to like school. Hieu informed me it took him a while to learn English. Unfortunately, he couldn’t recall how many years it took, but he said it felt like it took him a very long time to be able to speak and understand English. Other than the language barrier, he said his biggest difficulty and dislike all through out school was not fitting in and being treated different because he was a different race.
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When assessing his listening and speaking skills the only way I could tell he spoke another language other than English, was his accent that I could only hear from time-to-time. He learned how to read in English and then how to write, which he said was some what difficult but not as difficult as learning to speak English in general. Once he was able to read in English, he would read current events to expand his vocabulary. Hieu is at the advanced high stage of language development; he listens, speaks, reads, and writes very