My experience of L2 Acquisition is a Success or Failure?

Name: Jin

Class number: 200wk

The meaning of second language acquisition is a way of learning language after people learn their mother tongue. Stepan Krashen said the acquisition is a similar to naturally learning language like a their first language. My experience of second language acquisition is a success in spite of many difficulties in my early learning periods. In this essay I will discuss my experience from the time of my school years in Korea to the time of my 30’s I studied in England.

At the beginning of my first experience with a second language was in a middle school. I had a lots of curiosity of new language and new culture. However, my interests was not last long. Learning a new language was relay on a way of traditional teaching which was clearly based on a lecture. The teacher taught english as an explainer with a text book and students were in passive learning. According to the learner Retention rate teachers teaching technique shows very low percentage of effectivity on lecture, reading and audio-visual (only 5%, 10% and 20% in each). If I had a very strong intrapersonal intelligence on this learning type, I would have got a better score on reading and writing. But my score was not in good grade. This traditional way of teaching made me tired to study and made me a failure on the language acquisition.

By the time being, there were big moment to improve my English in my life. when I was about my 30’s, I had a chance to study in England. As I mentioned before, my acquisition english in Korea was totally a failure. I remembered at the very first moment in England how I was terrified to get a bus ticket and terribly scared buying a food and daily supplies in a market. I can explain that is certainly linked to Monitor Hypothesis from Krashen’s theory, before I spoke in my brain I was checking and worried about the accuracy and even I felt sorry for my low level of english and I felt a shame as an adult learner. I can also explain that relate to the Affective Filter Hypothesis. This filter was working with my high anxiety and lack of self-esteem, therefore the comprehensive input was prevented in my brain. By the way, in the new circumstance as an adult learner I had a internally motivated and self directed like a statement by Malcolm Knowles. I was able to use my life experience to understand new things and I was starting to be adapted in this environment. As well as I had naturally experienced through this new surroundings such as new friends, people, the signs of shops and buildings in London. I found myself my english was getting acquired naturally.

My experiences of the classroom in London was a good experience. The first thing that I surprised in a classroom, I could call the teacher’s name which was cultural shock to me. In Korea we cannot mentioned teacher’s name easily that represent very rude or not respect teacher. but in the European culture calling a teacher’s name is very natural and it is the first step to know each other. Then it clearly helped me to talking friendly with teacher and had a comfortable learning and communicating with people like a friends, teacher allowed me to speak with many mistakes and they understood my difficulties in learning. It reminds me how important of a good rapport is, it was proved that dynamic classroom easily formed in this good relationship. Moreover the lessons of learning language were various way of teaching such as pair work, sometimes group work on a subject, role playing and debating. Using thous ways I worked on cooperate with other students, considered others feeling and tried to understanding each differences and also I should considered various stories and article to telling and debating each other in english. It was able to improve my Interpersonal Intelligence and verbal-linguistic Intelligence.

In conclusion, I still have many mistakes in conversation and it is not easy to understand difficult grammar and various vocabulary, nevertheless I have a little confidence to communicate with foreigners and making a friend with them which I never imagined in the past. Definitely I can say that I successfully had learned English as a second language.

Word count: 730