My Experience In Learning English As A Second Language

My seminar provided an overview of chapter 4- explaining second language learning. During my introduction, key points from each of the 5 perspectives were discussed. The cognitive perspective was given priority as it contained many subcategories within itself. This section also allowed my group mates to connect theory and practice of second language learning. My group mates were able to connect to the noticing hypothesis, processability theory and the three principles of practice through their own personal experiences while learning a second language. The first discussion question asked my group members to evaluate their own understanding of how language learning occurs and compare it with the perspectives we covered. The second discussion question provided them a chance to assess each perspective and think of one weakness and one strength for each. Overall if I were to re-do my seminar, I would like to provide more attention to the other perspectives. I would add more discussion questions in order to stimulate more in-depth discussions. Similarly, adding supplemental information from an outside source to further discussion and connect the theories to pedagogy. Additionally, I would create an activity that focused more on teaching of a second language and how these theories have influenced the current practices used.

Becoming a second English language learner is something I along with many Hispanics had to face. Learning was something that I was always interested in, but in order to start it was necessary to overcome my ignorance and learn English. My first memories of learning English include watching morning cartoons. It almost became instinct for me to mimic the words that I heard. To be honest Dora the Explorer, Barney, and the Sesame Street bunch were my first teachers. It is funny sometimes to ask my mom about my first day of school. Even in the face of an unknown and my lack of English I still ran with excitement into the classroom. My mom stood at the doorway with tears in her eyes as I when up to some students without ever turning back to look

Learning English for me has been a hard journey. Born in Mexico City, both of my parents were Mexican. My father came from a medium low socio economical background, but he made his way up and became a lawyer (very smart and with great aspirations), my mother even though she was smart, her family circumstances caused her to forgo a higher education. Both Spanish speakers, they never thoroughly learned a 2nd language; they tried to learn English (father) and French (mother) but they never seriously pursued it, so their knowledge of other languages was basic. Reading and writing was well modeled at my home, books were everywhere as were open doors to good private education. Both of my parents were world travelers, so learning a language was really encouraged and an asset in my household. At the age of 3, my father registered me in a German preschool, so I did pre-kindergarten there. I just remember to singing “guten morgen fraulen” every morning. By the age of 4, my father decided to change me to a new school so I went to a British English bilingual school, where 75% of the day was fully English Immersion. English language was highly valued at school as well as in my country and learning English was seen as a precondition for access to higher jobs. (J.Long 2011)

Language can be hard to learn and I can not give you any more than my personal experience and the story of how I dealt with my past and present life in the country where I was raised. I am passionate about learning the English language more than any other language because I always thought that English was a language worth learning. I believe that war should stop in Burma and everyone should have the opportunity to learn a language. No one should be left behind.

Language as a subject is something we never give much thought to in our everyday lives,

English is an international language which is used officially all around the world. Anybody who wants to make connections with the world we live in should learn English. I had English language classes in my secondary and high school years. I also took some private English learning courses throughout summers in my country, Turkey. However, I could not improve my English effectively as all Turkish students in Turkey. I fully agree that English will be learned most efficiently in the boundaries of an English-speaking country not in the home country because of some cases. Therefore, I came here, USA, to learn English better after graduation from my university.

Vocabulary plays a significant role in English as second language learning process. For the majority of English as Second Language(ESL) learners, the ultimate goal of learning the language is to understand (read and listen) and communicate (write and speak) with little difficulty and the lack of sufficient vocabulary may be the constraint of such goal (Folse, 2004). As the bedrock of English and as well as language, vocabulary also facilitates the development of other language skills: lexical richness leads to the progress in the use of language, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing skills (Nation, 1994). Reversely, The improvement in such skills may enhance learners vocabulary size as the exposure to more learning materials improves the capacity to acquire new vocabulary. (The importance of learning vocabulary/ why vocabulary?)

Throughout the years, different methods have been used to teach English as a foreign language. In the past, teachers used the grammar translation approach, which consisted on reading literary texts and translating them from the target language into the mother tongue. This approach was influenced by the traditional methods that had been used for the teaching of Latin and Greek. It lost popularity throughout the years because linguists and teachers started to focus on the context instead of on form. The grammar translation approach used literary texts to teach the language, while the new approaches mainly worry about teaching the language used in real life situations. While the grammar approach took grammatical structures and vocabulary from

ESL students are students that speak English as a second language. Presently, there is many different system to characterize this type of students (qtd in Shi, Steen 63). For example, they can be seen as “English Language Learners (ELL), English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), English Language Development (ELD), English Language Service (ELS), and

Grammar has always been an important issue in second and foreign language learning and teaching. Some hold the view that grammar is not essential for second/foreign language learning and therefore have a ‘zero position’ regarding grammar teaching. On the other hand, some view that grammar is necessary for second/foreign language learning.

We live in a world surrounded by people of various cultures, countries, and ethnicities, who all speak different languages. As a young child, I attended a Spanish immersion program through my pre-school and elementary school. I was absorbed into a new culture much different from my own. I grew up learning words in Spanish before I knew them in English. I also developed unexpected friendships, spending much of my childhood in Spanish speaking households. As a college student, I look back on this time and greatly appreciate the skills and lessons I cultivated from learning a second language. Second language education should be required in elementary schools. Learning a second language leads children to become successful students with prosperous futures and connects people of different cultures.

People in the world changed their behavior and thinking as times go passed. For example, people the more they practice on reading and writing, the more they have knowledge about the concept. In my experiences in learning English, I have gained some skills throughout my studying year. It is because time is the main key to become an expert in something that we are constantly doing. In those time, we will learn something new that we have never learned before however, as time passed we will become more familiar with what we been doing. In my essay 1, I said “Nobody is born to be smart, intelligent to know everything. We all started from step zero where we do not know anything about the world which is full of unique things”. According to this quote, I claimed that everyone needs to take their time to learn new things because the more time we take, the better be in what we are doing. While I am learning to improve my writing style, I still have failure because I did not the real definition of academic writing and reading. However, there is one thing I learned throughout this semester; revision is the main key to success in academic reading and writing.

As we know that learning English in India it is gradually becomes very important due to century as well as techno-age is concerned. We all knew that English is taught either as Second Language or Target Language. It is very difficult for student-beginner who recently starts to learn English language as foreign language. One of the vital and pivotal pivot roles of learning Foreign Language is to open the treasure hidden in the literature of a particular language. To reveal such treasure one needs to be mastered in different methods of teaching the foreign languages. This makes easy full for learners to learn foreign language. If we want to understand different method of teaching foreign language things linguistically we can understand it as “A method in linguistics and language teaching determines what and how much is taught. The order in which it

I learned much more than I expected as I embarked on this journey to immerse myself in the Asian culture. My cultural immersion experience with the Handbridge Mandarin School, although it was from a distance, allowed me the opportunity to relate with someone who currently lives in Asia and hear about her experience learning English, as well as teaching her own native language to others. From this first experience, I have a new appreciation for language education, particularly being a student in a new culture. I had never been in a situation where I did not understand the language that was spoken by my teacher; however, this is what many students in America experience when their families move here from other countries.

It seems that learning a foreign language has never been an easy job and it takes a lot of time, sometimes all your life to master it (Brown, 2000). Among the four main skills: speaking, listening, reading and writing, the first one could be considered the most challenging and the most crucial because it includes “all other kinds of knowing” (Ur, 2012). Until now, I can still remember how difficult it was to develop this particular skill when I was in high school. In this essay, I will clearly describe my learning experiences as a grade-ten student trying to improve the speaking skill through English lessons at high school.