Learner's Language Learning Experience - Essay Example

I began to learn English at the age of three and since then my feelings about this language, specifically about grammar and lexical, have changed a number of times so far in my life.   My outlook changed several times mainly because I was influenced by my family, specially my parents and also by the various teachers that I have had all through my academic career.   As a young boy, I knew very little about the English language, obviously because it is not my mother tongue. English was a foreign language for my family but my parents understood the importance of acquiring the language well in time, and made it a point to encourage and guide me through in whichever possible way they could. Today, I can’t thank them enough for what they did for me. All my tutors, from school, college and even private ones have played a key role in shaping my feelings and building my knowledge about the English language. I remember, in school I had this teacher who would teach English in a rather weird manner. He pronounced the words with a marked regional influence and as students we didn’t realise this problem and kept on mispronouncing several words till very late. Another problem I faced was in the grammatical section. I could not relate to the rules of English grammar because I would always do the mistake of translating my thoughts in to English from my native language. The grammatical rules of my native language are starkly different from that of English and thus, it creates havoc when one tries to make a literal translation. My parents began reading to me when I was very young; this definitely helped me in developing my vocabulary. It is only when I came to college that my English learning process became more rigorous and successful. I came across a very good teacher who explained the concept of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) to me. He made me understand that if I want to improve my English, I would have to follow the key principle of increased interaction. The Theory of Interactionism is best for Second Language Learning and Teaching. The interactionist theorists argue that “much second language acquisition takes place through conversational interaction” (Lightbown and Spada, 1999, P43).     The position of interactionist has lots of advantages in many ways. First and foremost, interactional modification enables input to become comprehensible and comprehensible input encourages acquisition, therefore, interactional modification encourages acquisition (Lightbown and Spada, 1999). The second advantage could be that in addition to the input the interactionist position makes even output comprehensible. Swain (1995) presses on her comprehensible output proposition which asserts that output, besides input, is also crucial in SLA. This can be explained in the following manner. Usually, output allows learners to create awareness of language knowledge gaps, experiment with language forms and structures, and obtain feedback from others about language use (Ariza and Hancock, 2003). Additionally, according to Long (1983), it is modified interaction, or negotiation of meaning that makes input and output comprehensible (Lightbown and Spada, 1999). Conclusively, communication and interaction can help learners put their learning into practice, and they can gain fresh knowledge from interlocutors. Based on Swain’s emphasis, this principle is drawn and end number of strategies has been developed to increase student’s opportunities. I too, was encouraged to use my language skills in direct communication. This came in handy especially for the purpose of “negotiation meaning” in actual situations or day to day life. Negotiating for meaning provides productive development of inter-language. Then syntactic processing comes into picture. If it is into the knowledge of a learner that he need to speak at a later point, then the learner is more likely to observe underlying syntactic structure. When it comes to test the hypotheses, CI relies predominantly on what is received from others. This input may not come at the right time to answer questions one is forming about a language point. Speaking allows the learner to control feedback on points of uncertainty. The automaticity or the fluency is likely to develop only by frequent use. Going further, in order to develop proficiency in discourse skills e.g. turn taking etc., one need to actually practise them. At last, in order to develop a personal voice, it becomes very important to develop a personal manner of speaking so that one can exert influence on topics of conversation perhaps steering the topic along routes of interest. I keep this piece of information in my mind always and so have tried to develop a style of my own. Not only this, I also indulged myself in interactive sessions like cooperative learning; project based learning, study buddies and one-to one student-teacher interaction. I love this concept and I started firmly believing that interaction is must in Language learning. As far as one-to-one aid is concerned, it gives the students a chance to actually stay determined and benefit the most from one on one interaction. I really can figure this out as a fantastic idea for English Language Learners. Even the study-buddy concept is great. Generally, students feel a little more relaxed in a group setting or functioning with a partner, so having a study-buddy would be very much beneficial for English Language Learners. From my personal experience, I can say that via this method I picked up the language skills I needed a little faster just by having that one-to-one interaction with another student. Apart from this, I surely benefited from the teacher-student interaction as well. Drawing from Cummins’s theory is to increase thinking and study skills. Academic language and cognitively demanding communication are strategies...  I have incorporated what I have learned from SLA into my personal philosophy of language learning and teaching. Of course, my opinions and beliefs about language learning and teaching are based on the above discussion; other factors that have influenced my English Language learning are the following: 1. Possible methods used in the classroom 2. The best SLA theory 3. Proper classroom atmosphere 4. Error correction.   As, I have discussed, I think that the theory of Interactionism is the best for Second Language Learning and Teaching. However, over the last few decades, there has been much debate and lesser agreement on any particular theory of SLA. Be it the Behaviorist theory, the innatist theory, the connectionist theory or the interactionist position, all are meant to speak for the SLA and have been influential in contributing to language learning and teaching.  Over the years, I have seen that the atmosphere of a class, in some measure, establishes the effect of the whole class. I have felt that a classroom which is warm, encouraging, stimulating and accepting, yet businesslike and on task is the most conducive place for language learning. Moreover, it becomes far easier if the class is “student-centered instead” of “teacher-centered”. This is to make the classroom acquisition rich (Ellis, 1999). In a classroom, an insightful teacher creates a learning environment and meanwhile “takes learners’ individual personalities and learning styles into account” (Lightbown & Spada, 1999, P69).     According to Lightbown & Spada (1999), the overall findings show that positive attitudes and motivation are related to success in L2 learning. To create positive mood, the students should be motivated and given lots of chances to take part in classroom activities that are based on a cooperative rather than individualistic approach to learning. For example, pair activities, project work, group work activities and role plays. These kind of activities are intended in compliance to different levels of intelligence and aptitude, the personality, and learners’ beliefs and preferences. These things uplift the student’s motivational level and they can learn from listening to the language used by other members of the group and generate a great amount of language (Richards, n.d.).    A great teacher in my college explained to me that the philosophy of teaching also contributes to language learning process. She convinced me that the “communicative” methodology of choice is the best, which is also known as Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). CLT is aimed to “master- the rules of sentence formulation in a language and still not be very successful at being able to use the language for meaningful communication” (Richards, n.d.).     I mainly benefitted from a form of CLT, that is, Task-Based instruction (TBI), also known as task-based teaching.  TBL methods boast of helping students in acquiring grammar and learning how to actually communicate using suitable social language in the culture of the target language. As i practiced TBL, I found that when the feedback was given to me by other participants in a conversation, I started more consciously monitoring the interaction and attempted judiciously to verify, practice and learn by heart the correct and appropriate forms in the conversation. Thus, once again, I realized the importance of ‘Negotiation of meaning’ in promoting the use of learning strategies by the learner. One rule that I by- hearted is that of Mantello.M (1997). He points that “We should constantly keep before us that the only true objective in error correction is student learning”. The way a teacher handles errors can make or mar a student’s learning. My college teacher never corrected errors comprehensively, that is, she didn’t look for and corrected every single error. Rather, she selected the most helpful technique for errors and always gave positive feedback, which played a key role in how I perceived and interpreted the correction. My teacher also used a combination of correction techniques and clarification requests (Mantello, 1997) to make sure her indication was clear for the me to realize that my utterance had not been understood or that there was a certain mistake in it and that a repetition or a reformulation was needed, and it wouldn’t interfere with the communicative focus. To conclude, I can say that though these theories of SLA have been influential, but not sufficient. Based on my experience, I can say that second language acquisition is based on many factors, such as, the personal characteristics of learners, the structure of the native and target language, opportunities for interaction with native speakers, and access to correction etc. All of these cannot be controlled. However, “a better understanding of them will permit teachers and learners to make the most of the time they spend together in the twin processes of teaching and learning a second language” (Lightbown and Spada, 1999). References Ariza, E. N. and Hancock, S. (2003). Second Language Acquisition Theories as a Framework for Creating Distance Learning Courses. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, October 2003. Retrieved on January 1, 2006 from http://www.irrodl.org/content/v4.2/ariza-hancock.html Ellis, Rod. (1999). Making the Classroom Acquisition Rich. In Learning a Second Language through Interaction, Ellis, Rod., 211 ff. Lightbown, P. M. and Spada, N. (1999). How languages are learned. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mantello, M. (1997). Error Correction in the L2 Classroom. Canadian Modern Language Review, 54, October 1997. Retrieved on December 29, 2005, from http://www.utpjournals.com/jour.ihtml?lp=product/cmlr/541/541_TCL_Mantello.html Richards, J. C. (n.d.). Communicative Language Teaching Today. SEAMEO Regional Language Centre Read More