Name: Kim SangRi(Kimberly)

Teacher: Valerie

Essay Title:

My Second language acquisition experience

Class #:34

Word Count:510

1.Intelligences

2.Traditional Classroom

3.Effective Teaching

4.Theories of Second Language Acquisition

My Second language acquisition experience

When I was 11-year-old, I started to learn English at language institute. At the first time, learning second language was interesting. Without any encouragement to study English, I liked to listen pop songs, to see Hollywood movies, and to read English newspapers.  At that time, I was a very active student to learn English by myself.

However, as times goes by, I could not have any passion to learn English. When I attended a middle school, the English teacher forced us to study about grammar, words, and reading skill. In the class, the teacher just read the textbook and translated whole sentences by herself. There was no feedback between the teacher and students. Nobody wanted to talk with her. It was seriously boring time in my life. I recall the teacher’s teaching skill that was not good and ridiculous. Her methodology could not let me to study a variety of English. If I had met other English teachers who had a state of the art skill to teach and made students to study actively, I could have started to study in depth. I think that the wrong learning methodology was derived from competitive entering famous university. That being said, as a student of Korean school system, I could not change my mind to other efficient ways to learn English before college graduation.

Fortunately, after graduated college, I got a chance to work in overseas company. The official language of the company was English. However, I was nervous, that was because I did not have any experience talking with native speaker before that time. So, I lost my confidence of speaking in English surrounded by exotic environments. To overcome my difficult situation, I set my goal: talking with colleague, reading English news paper, not speaking in Korean.  These objects were very useful to study English by myself. My classroom was different compared to a regular classroom. All passengers and crew members were my English teacher and conversation partner.  Even my colleagues have different cultures and characters, but all of the member was kind and so lovely.  I and colleagues are close to each other in age at that time. Our interesting issue was almost same, then we could share the interests in English. By doing so, I could improve English speaking skills.  Also, during work time, I could practice formal words and decent sentences properly. My manager was strict to speak in English with courtesy manner. He actively responded in my errors directly. He was kind of a enabler teaching type. Without any condition, I tried to improve my English skill to show my development. After several months, he agreed my endeavor and recognized my good works. After the precious time, I do not have any problem to communicate with foreigner.

Learning English in school was not enough to arouse my interest studying English. In my case, working field or practical usages are so important to exercise and to be interested in English.