My English Learning Experience

Name: Kyungjin No

Class Number: TESOL 62 Class

The world is increasingly changing into a Global society. We are sharing a lot of information with people from different cultural backgrounds and we are now paying more attention to communicate with one another more often than ever. Holding meetings, doing business, searching for information and solving problems are all examples. 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 in learning English, I'd like to facilitate a efficient teaching approach towards my future students.

I was first exposed to English in the 2nd grade at an Elementary school in Kenya. Before I went to Kenya, I didn't know any English, it was possible for me to read books written in English and understand what other people were saying a little bit within a year. Learning English was acquired naturally through total immersion in the language. Learning English was quite interesting and new to me as far as I remembered. After I came returned 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 retained a good memory of learning English even though I lost my interest during my junior and high school life. I still had a desire to speak English, I wanted to improve my English speaking skills to keep pace with the global era because in any workplace, English speaking skills are required. I took an English conversation class at a language school after I entered university. However, I just knew a few short sentences that I previously acquired naturally and didn't fade 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. Which one I decided to take an 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 and made English an interesting subject.

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

I've experienced taking a lot of conversation classes and some TOEIC classes. Almost all conversation classes are 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 involvers or enablers. In most TOEIC classes, however, the knowledge transmission from teachers to students was an unilateral approach. In that result, even though the students who got almost perfect scores on the TOEIC exam, couldn't speak English. The test scores therefore, don't reflect true communication skills.

Based on a variety of English conversation classes which I've experienced, I'd like to say how can one 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 anything 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 those 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, that made me improve my communication skills. 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 found that I could improve my vocabulary and reading skills through watching American sit-coms, dramas, etc. I could be exposed to authentic English without going to an English speaking country and also could gain more interest to learn English.

The most important teacher's role is to arouse the students interest in 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.