01. Second Language Acquisition Assignment

146WD_kyung

Until now, my personal experience of language learning has not been so satisfying. To be honest, it seems to be a failure. I think the ideal result an effective language acquisition brings is a fluency in speaking and listening. For almost 25 years, I have been learning English. Given time and efforts I've put, it is natural that my level of speaking and listening skill should be high. But I'm still not content with my listening and speaking skill. It's about time to find out the reasons why I couldn't be an effective language learner.

To begin with, it is reasonable to think of my characteristics as adult learner. As often said, adult learners know what motivates them to learn English. Over their own career, they feel the need to learn English for themselves because of a variety of reasons such as promotion, business and so on. Also, they tend to take responsibility for their decision to learn English. This is why they are superior to the children in terms of self-direction. However, there is more to adult learners than that. Often, as adults, they are not flexible in accepting new skills and theories due to fixed perspectives and fear that they would make others know their weaknesses. They are so conscious of the social status and the reputation that the fact that they may look like a failure or slow-learner when making mistakes would cause them not to attempt unfamiliar methods. All these characteristics as adult learners may keep them from being a success in English acquisition and there is no exception to me either.

And let's think of an environment in which we learn a second language. Usually, we have either traditional or modern classrooms in learning English. In my case, I studied at traditional classrooms. What I described as traditional classrooms means physical settings.   They are the layout of desks and the position of the board and the podium that were fixed. In particular, the position of teachers and students was almost not changeable. Usually, I learned English, watching a teacher who was standing in front of the board. Students rarely changed their positions to speak and talk in English, just hearing and taking notes at their desks. There were not many visual aids other than textbooks and cassette players. In this overstructured room, I couldn't but have an environment where I would learn English passively without any cognitive intrigue and creativity.

Obviously, these features of traditional classrooms accompany with a certain teaching style that is often described as 'the explainer' type of teacher. At that time, Even though my English teachers knew subject matters very well, they had limited teaching methodology. They explained or lectured, simply conveying information to the students. Much of the class hour consisted of teachers explaining concept or subject matter. Students rarely had opportunities where they could tell their opinion freely in English. All that students had to do was take notes and memorize what they saw and heard. Just before the mid or final exam, that teaching type was indeed useful and helpful in acquiring much information in a short time. But in terms of language acquisition, it was not necessarily effective to me.

There are a variety of definitions of effective teaching. We tend to assume that when we get good grades through certain teaching method, we call it an effective teaching. I also got a good mark in English test through this teaching method and, those days, I thought it was effective. But now I think language acquisition needs another definition of effective teaching When learning a second language, to be more effective learner, it is imperative to have many chances to listen and speak a language with many trial and errors. That is, an effective teaching involves 'The Enabler' and 'The Involver' in addition to 'the Explainer' type. If I had had 'an experiential learning cycle', I could have become an effective and fluent speaker. In other words, I should have had the following process: Doing, recalling, reflecting on, drawing conclusion, preparing something for future practical experience. As for me, an effective teaching is likely to be possible only when teachers motivate the students to experience this process.

For these reasons, I couldn't be a success as a language learner. But keeping in mind the saying that "Failure is but the threshold of success.", I'll put every effort in advancing my English skill.