Describe Your Own Experience of Learning a Language. What Conclusions Can You Draw for Your Own Teaching of English?

Describe Your Own Experience of Learning a Language. What Conclusions Can You Draw for Your Own Teaching of English?
Foad Yamini
TESOL student

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to show how the writer has learned English by self-studying it. The paper describes the conditions that acted as stimulus to the learning process. Then, explaining how the process of self-studying happened, he names some of the materials used. Next, the writer tries to explain when and how learning started and after that tells us how long and how often his exposure to English has been. The essay also tries to describe how difficult learning new vocabulary in different contexts by self-study has been. Furthermore, he looks at the styles of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar the writer has mastered in different settings and situations. Additionally, the writer talks about the efficiency of his learning and finally, he comes to the conclusion that his way of English learning has influenced his teaching in a way that made him the sole speaker in class which was beneficial just to him not to the students.

I was my own teacher from the very first beginning of my English learning. It was just me, an English Translation graduate from a state university in Iran with almost no language skills. All I learned was how to translate different kinds of English texts into Persian. We had been told and we were supposed to know the language before applying it for our major. However, when I returned to my hometown from the city where my university was, all I could remember was some blur grammar rules and vocabulary. I could do nothing related to my major to make money except translation which was not well-paid. I could not be hopeful of having an unrelated job either because it needed money, skills, or both. I was in my late twenties in 2009 and it was time to stand on my own feet. I was under a lot of stress until a friend of mine who was running a testing center asked me how I was making money. He said, “You have studied English translation. Haven’t you?” and continued, “You can at least teach English.” Now, you can guess how frustrated I got. That moment, I decided to make a career out of what I did not have- English language skills.

First, I decided to take English classes, but I couldn’t afford it. Then, I changed my mind and started self-paced studying. Studying the most famous English course books in Iranian language institutes would be the best start I thought. It was “Interchange Series, 3^rd
Edition” by: Jack C. Richards., Cambridge University Press. The day I bought the books and the teacher’s editions, I started to study them by myself imagining that the next day I would have a class to teach, I studied a page and its corresponding pages in the teacher’s edition to learn how to teach it and tried to predict the questions that the students might have asked. I wanted to be a knowledgeable teacher so no probable questions should have remained unanswered; therefore, I explored all the relevant books available in the market. A couple of years after “Interchange Series” had been wildly used, many new English course books came into the market such as Top Notch by: Joan Saslow and Allen Ascher., Pearson Longman Inc, Touchstone by: Michael McCarthy, Jeanne McCarten, Helen Sandiford., Cambridge University Press, American English File, by Clive Oxenden, Christina Latham-Koening, Paul Seligson, OUP, and hundreds of other skill-focused ones like “Tactics for Listening” by Jack C. Richards., OUP, “Active Skills for Reading” by Neil J. Anderson, Thomson ELT., and many others. I have been self-studying most of these English course books since 2009 the same way as I did with “Interchange Series”.
My own learning was happening along with my learners’ as I was trying to express myself in simple words. Language learning can be the result of “trying out and experimenting with different ways of saying things” and “creating meaningful and purposeful interactions through the language” (Richards, 2006, p.4). Since I could only teach the very basic-level classes for about a year, I had to learn first how to simplify the language and try different ways of saying things. I have tried to express my thoughts and ideas simply in short sentences in my classes. Easy-to-understand definitions from dictionaries have been great help providing me with the exposure to correct English.
My exposure to English has been through books and media since I started in 2009. The only natural input I have got so far has been from CDs, magazines, books, Websites and television which I used as I was studying by myself and also in my classes. I haven’t had the experience of talking to a native speaker of English except once for a very short time during which I learned a lot. After that, I have been thinking how wonderful it would be to spend a while in an English speaking country as a language learner. Then, maybe I hadn’t been forced to consult a dictionary to know the context of every single English word.
The most difficult thing for me as a learner who has not attended any English classes as a student has been first how to expand my vocabulary and then how to use the words in their contexts. The examples in dictionaries, the texts I have been reading and the English movies and shows I have been watching have provided me with the context I need to learn English words but since English is never used around me and if it does it is too little to be taken into account, I have to always look the new words I come across up in my dictionaries before using them in my classes. This process, i.e. the need to look up the meaning and the context of a new word takes a lot more time than hearing it from a native speaker of English. This along with shortage of free time to read English texts in different fields has caused the biggest gap in my knowledge- the vocabulary gap. Sometimes I feel I need many more words that I do now. In some fields like science and math, I am a real failure and that is because I haven’t learned them in English and now that I have to teach them in English, I need to look for the technical words, expressions, and jargons then ways to simplify them for students to understand. Now, you can guess how much the preparation takes, and this is the main cause of my slow progress in learning technical words of different fields of study.
I guess I have mastered the informal and formal styles of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary rather than the other language components. The course books, which I have been taking advantage of, provide students with situations where friends or colleagues are having a conversation or the same characters are talking to strangers or they are in meetings or writing letters to each other and these situations and settings are where informal and formal styles are being used (Module 1, section 1.3.7). One can rarely find intimate, casual, or frozen styles in English course books; however, they can be exposed to them through movies and television. Personally speaking, because I have been studying English course books and teaching them during my own learning process, I guess I am much better in using informal and formal styles than others.
I always compare my language abilities with those who have had the experience of being with native speakers of English to know how efficient my own learning has been. Of course, a native speaker can find many gaps in my abilities but considering the way I have been through from having no skills to being a successful English teacher in my hometown and achieving this through self-study, I can say that my learning has been efficient enough.
During my first two years of teaching experience, I should confess that it was only me who did most of the talking in my classes. I was unaware of the fact that the students have the right to speak too. I was the teacher but when I looked at myself I was actually one of the students. I wanted to prove to both myself and my students that I was accurate and fluent enough and a good teacher. The only difference between my students and I was the authority and the preparation I had which I as an inexperienced teacher was unintentionally misusing my authority. So, their share of time to talk was next to nothing. Reading about teaching, consulting my experienced colleagues, and attending teacher training courses paved the way for the view that the students’ oral participation plays the most important role in improving their speaking ability. Gradually, I realized it had been the teaching of the language that enabled me to speak it, so I started becoming more and more silent, letting the students speak and control the class. I found out that being the sole speaker was beneficial just to me not the students. Afterwards, I tried to reduce my talking time in class especially in upper-level classes where students have better commands of language skills.
References

Module one, (2014). Language varieties, section 1.3.7. TESOL Course, London Teacher Training College. Tehran Institute of Technology.

Richards, Jack C., (2006). Communicative Language Teaching Today, New York, Cambridge University Press.