Name: Jinny

Class Number: 203WD

Essay Topic: My experience with L2 Acquisition was a Failure.

Let me define the word ‘acquisition’ first. It is a way of learning a second language after your first language has been learned.

In terms of the definition, my L2 acquisition was a failure.

There are several reasons why I firmly believe that my L2 acquisition was a failure.

First, I was raised by a very conservative unfair society. I remembered one of my classmates who often enjoyed singing some English Pop songs when I was an elementary school girl. Astonishingly, nobody complimented her, on the contrary, I felt pity for her because of her surroundings which made her heavily exposed to western cultures – her father was a sailor who left her family for a long time. In these days, we do not hesitate to give a big complimentary comments for those students who could sing English pop songs well. It is good as long as we do not force our kids to sing a song in English every day.

Second, I’ve had many untalented English teachers. Before describing this situation, I want to be honest. I won’t blame all of my previous English teachers, for they also might have been the tragical victims of the underdeveloped society.

I started to learn English when I entered middle school. In Korea, English is regarded as one of the essential curriculums in school in order to enter the high valued name of “Universities”.  So, throughout my time in middle and high school, my teachers taught English to me by rote.

I remember how my first English teacher was when I was newly introduced to English. She was completely ignorant of Individual learner differences or Multiple intelligence theory.

Even though she went through her pedagogy course at her university, she might not have known how to apply her knowledge to real teaching situations.

Third, I was led to study English by the Traditional teaching method.

At that time, the Traditional Teaching method, the opposite concept of the Modern Teaching method, prevailed in the whole Korean society.

When it comes to the Effective teaching way, I think modern teaching method is better than Traditional one.

However, most of my English teachers adopted the traditional teaching method. They seemed more like explainers, not involvers or enablers as teachers.  They were always in front of their students, writing lots of content onto the blackboard as they order their students to read them out loud and translate them at the same time, without giving them enough times to form their sentences. They didn’t care about establishing a good Rapport with their students at all.

Also, they weren’t aware that with their teaching routines, they were producing hundreds of Rule-formers. They might know that was the right way though.

It was a really sad reality we had in the past.

In these days, there are lots of Data-gatherers educated by the Modern teaching method. However, they are still struggling to learn English.

Natural communicative atmosphere such as horseshoe-shaped desk arrangement and student-centered system are fundamental factors that enable students to improve all Language skills at a time.

Among many language skills and systems, I was forced to only listen and read by my explainers type of teachers who were solely focused on lexis and grammar. They assessed the language proficiency of their students with grammar exams and lexis papers.

To be honest, their pronunciations and intonations were both awful. I even witnessed one of my teachers struggling to communicate with English speakers in a simple situation.

So, I couldn’t have any improvements with my speaking and writing skills at all.

According to Tesol study, 5 to 10 percent of Learner retention rates were all I acquired through experiencing countless lecture-and-reading teaching methods.

Even though my previous attempt in L2 acquisition had been a catastrophic failure, I found the Tesol program and started to make actual progress before it was too late.

I was astonished after realizing what my problems had been so far and summarising it through my essay after 10 hours of Tesol training.  I do so appreciate my Tesol teacher David who assisted me to find the right path for my L2 acquisition.

I believe that it will be very helpful for teaching even my kids right after terminating Tesol course. And I would become the teacher who could enable students to get their successful L2 acquisition in the near future.