Individual English Language Learner - Essay Example

Individual English Language Learner My interviewee’s name is Oyla Macgill. She’s a 20 year old student studying Public Relations at Jordanstown University. She currently lives in Ballymena but is a native of Belarus, which is situated between Poland and Ukraine. She began to learn English at primary school at the age of 6. When she was 7 years old, she had come over for a month through a charity that helped children who suffred from the Cherlnoble incident of 1986. During that time she stayed with a family in Larne. As such, she was exposed to the English language fairly early. At the age of 10, she came to live in Northern Ireland. She can still speak Russian fluently but forgets how to write some iof it as she rarely reads any Russian books. Oyla picked up her early vocabulary from common things such as food, films, household appliances, magazines and music. Celebrities also helped her learn English by reading magazines that published stories about them. She also acquired English words from listening to her favorite American music. Oyla displayed a strong desire to learn the language. Reading books and completing English exercises helped her lean a bit of English before she started school. She found books helped her with grammar but listening to people talk helped her to understand how to say words. Oyla enjoyed school and believed going there was the best way to learn the English language. She found it the best method of learning the language because she wanted to understand what everyone else in her class was saying. She didn’t want to be left out. Now, as a university student, Oyla is aware that she needs to stay more diligent in acquiring English. Not only is everything around her in English – the people, the places, the classes she wsa taking – but she is also taking up Public Relations. Her major entails conversing and interacting with different kinds of people. She has to be articulate and confident. While she was learning English she came across a few difficulties. She found using different verbs confusing such as begin – began. It took her a while to understand when to use which verb and with what word. The use of “a” and “the” was hard as well because in Russia, she didn’t h ave to put auxiliary words in front of main words. It was just the main words put together. The varied accents were difficult for her, too. Also, people spoke fast and used made-up slang English. She found it odd that when one goes to a town 10 minutes down the road from another town the people talked with completely different accents. For her that was strange as in Russia, even though it’s a massive country, everyone talks with the same accent. Another problem was when she had to learn double-barred words such as pollo mints. She would say mint pollos. She would say chips and fish instead of fish and chips. The Russian alphabet is also completely different from the English alphabet so learning new letters was very hard. Even the writing in Russia would be italics whereas in English it isbubblier. The Russian language is harder than the English language as there are 36 letters in the alphabet. Also, they would be more difficult tosay. As for writing, they employed some symbols, too, unlike in English. The Belarusian language is part of the Slavic languages like Polish, Ukranian, Czech, Serbian and Croatian, etc. Strong “akanie”, “dzekanie” and “cekanie” are typical of the dialects in central Belarus. In 1906 there came about a uniform system of spelling for Belarusian. New letters appeared for Latin script and use of some letters in the Cyrillic version ceased. Intsead, they used ‘ / I / wy. In the Decree of 28th August 1993, there was a debate as a reaction to the adoption of the Belarusian Cyrillic writing. As a consequence, Belarusian was brought closer to Russian, grammatically and phonetically. In 1991, when Belarus became independent, Belarusian started to be known as the state language of the Republic of Belarus. There seems to be limited written information in English on the details of the Belarusian language system probably because they use Russian in education and public life. There are two variations of the Belarusian language. These are narkomaŭka, initiated by Stalin and is officially used today; and, taraškievica which came from the person who wrote the 1st Belarusian grammar. The two have differences in syntax, morphology and writing. The grammar rule for modern Belarusian works on the principle of “you write down what you hear. (Belarusian grammar) It has a grammatical system which contains affixes, suppletivism, intonation, function words, roots combining, reduplication and order of words. Suppletivism means using two roots to make up the forms of one verb, like ‘go” and ‘went’ in English. (Gazariah 2003) I think this is why Oyla had a hard time with the English sentence structure. There are 6 cases of nouns in Belarusian grammar and 8 types of pronouns. When I interviewed Oyla on tape she said “emm” a lot and to be helped with words. For example, she was talking about people living in apartments and couldn’t remember the word “storey”. She has also picked up on English slang as she said “cause” instead of “because”. There are a lot of before and after words in her speach when they aren’t relevant. I think a big reason Oyla continues to have difficulty adapting to the English language is because she grew up using the Belarusian language. At the age of 10, the age when Oyla came to the country, her cognitive skills had already been developed. Children start to “learn” their native language at the early age of 2. This is usually done through parroting their family members or people they watch on TV. This is why even without formal education children can already converse when from the time they’re three. By the time they are 6, most have acquired enough communication skills to enter formal schooling. When Oyla moved to Northern Ireland, she was already well-versed in her native language, Belarusian. After this interview, I realize that Oyla displays two of the VAK learning style, namely: visual and auditory. I wonder if she knows this. It would be beneficial to Oyla, in my opinion, if she knew this fact. As researched by Donald Clark (2008) “most students are unaware of their learning styles and if left to their own means, they are UNLIKELY to start learning in new ways. Thus, knowledge of one’s learning styles can be used to increase self-awareness about their strengths and weaknesses as learners. In other words, all the advantages claimed for metacognition (being aware of one’s own thought and learning processes) can be gained by encouraging learners to become knowledgeable about their own learning and that of others.” Oyla is an avid reader. She reads magazines and books, knowing these will help her make her a better speaker. Personally, I believe this is an excellent way to learn grammar & vocabulary. Avid readers have wider vocabularies than those who read as a necessity. They are also become more observant in the use of grammar. Oyla was right in saying that reading books helped her with grammar. Printed materials have been edited and revised to be grammatically proper and coherent. Language learners can find helpful words, phrases, idioms, expressions that they can use in conversation. The more a learner reads, the more his mind becomes familiar with these vocabularies. Unconsciously, the learner may use these in speech. He may also find himself correcting his own mistakes because his mind, continuously exposed to English in written materials, tells him something’s wrong. The interviewee is also an auditory learner because she has admitted to intentionally using her past time of listening to music an avenue for studying the language. The only disadvantage to this though is that most songs are more concerned with matching words to fit the melody. At times, this practice has led to grammatically incorrect lyrics. If the listener is a language learner with problems in grammar, this may have a big effect on her communication skills. In Oyla’s case, this can further be aggravated by the exposure, and her use, of slang. Because of the big difference in the grammar concepts of her native language and English and the points mentioneded above, Oyla is now still having a hard time reconciling when and what to use in proper speech. A good aspect of though of her listening activities is that, like she says, it’s a way to improve her pronunciation skills. This is true. It is my opinion, too, that being able to just hear a word or phrase over and over again will make our subconscious absorb and store it for use. This is how Oyla acquired her native language. I agree it will indeed be helpful in her acquisition of this second one. References Belarusian grammar, Absoluteastronomy.com, Accessed on April 1, 2009 from http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Belarusian_grammar Clark, D 2009, Performance, Learning, Leadership & Knowledge, Accessed on April 2, 2009 from http://nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/styles.html Gazariah. , 2003, Re: Digest Number 828, e-mail, yahoo.com, viewed April 1, 2009, http://listserv.linguistlist.org/ cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0309&L=gothic-l&P=6319. Read More