My English Learning Experience

Name: Kyungjin No

Class Number: TESOL 62 Class

The world is increasingly changing into Global society. We are sharing a lot of information with people from different cultural backgrounds and we are now paying more attention to communicate one another more often than ever for holding meetings, doing business, searching information and solving problems. According to these changes, we are more focusing on communication skill than other factors when we learn English as a second language. Based on my experiences to learn English, I'd like to make my future students facilitate more efficient learning.

When I was first exposed to English was a 2nd grade in Elementary school in Kenya. Before I went to Kenya I didn't know about English at all. However, it could be possible for me to read books written in English and understand what other people say a little bit within a year. I think it was possible that I was immersed in the environment for acquiring English by naturally. Learning English was quite interesting and new to me as far as I remembered. After I came back to Korea, I restarted learning English when I was in a junior student. The teachers only taught to English focusing on grammar and vocabulary and the students had to memorize it. At that time, most of our English teachers in school were explainer. When I was a junior student I hated to memorize things. I wound up totally losing my interest in English.

Fortunately, I had a good memory of learning English even though I lost my interest during my junior and high school life, there was a desire to speak English well in my mind. Also I wanted to improve my English speaking skill to keep pace with the global era because in any workplace English speaking skill was required. So I took a English conversation class at a language school after I entered university. However, I just knew a few short sentences what I acquired naturally and didn't faded from my memory. I couldn't make any sentences what I wanted to say because I didn't understand the grammar structure of English. Since then, I realized even though I didn't like to study grammar, to speak in English I should study grammar as well. So I decided to take a English grammar class for speaking at a language school. Fortunately, I met a good English grammar teacher. He was an involver and sometimes an enabler. He let the students know the structure of grammar and how it applies in real life by using it. Due to his teaching method, I knew the relevance of grammar and conversation. He was the teacher who changed my mind about grammar like that it could also be an interesting subject.

When we approach English as a second language which is totally different from Korean especially grammatically, it was a good approach to teach English grammar first. However, the results can vary greatly by teaching methods. When I learned English in a junior and high school, I felt grammar is useless to improve communicate skill. I didn't feel the need to be learned and just felt English is very boring subject. However, I realized that the English grammar is also one of the essential elements to improve communication skill, and can be a interesting subject by different teaching method through my experiences.

I've experienced taking a lot of conversation classes and some TOEIC classes. Almost all conversation classes were classified by the students level. In contrast, most TOEIC classes were not. Even in teaching methods, they were showing greater differences. In conversation classes, most teachers were an involver or an enabler. However, in most TOEIC classes, the knowledge transmission from teachers to students was an unilateral approach. In that result, even though the students who get almost perfect scores on the TOEIC exam, they can't speak English. The test scores don't mean to have enough communication skill.

Based on a variety of English conversation classes which I've experienced, I'd like to say how can be different to students posture in the classroom by the role of the teachers in the same English conversation class. When I first took an English conversation class, I didn't have any confidence to say in front of other students. So if the teacher didn't give me any chance to speak, I couldn't say a word during the whole class time. Some teachers only gave a chance to speak the students who wanted to speak voluntarily. Because I didn't have much confidence to speak voluntarily, I just wanted to have a chance to speak in my mind. Fortunately, there were teachers who cared about the learners characteristics and led all students to participate and practice. Thanks to those teachers made me improve my communication skill. Of course, those teachers had a high retention rates.

If we don't have any interest to learn English, it could be hard for the students to improve their English. As I experienced above, which methodology the teachers choose can be changed to arouse the students interest. Unlike we used to study English with the text book before, now we are using various different media and tools to learn English. In my case, when I learned English through books it was hard for me to improve my speaking skill, I only could improve my vocabulary and reading skill. However, by watching American sit-coms, dramas, etc. I could be exposed to real-life English without going to an English speaking country and also could have more interest to learn English.

The most important teacher's role is to arouse the students interest whatever the student's purpose is to learn English, and then catch the weak part of the students well when they learn English, suggest them the new methodology to overcome their weaknesses. Since the students cognition is relevance-oriented, I want to be a teacher who has a good relevance with the students.