Learning Strategies Diary, Melissa Duprat

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

While my intentions were lofty and I had planned on starting much earlier, I am only beginning to study today for the Praxis II exam that I will take on Saturday, June 9. Since I had already determined that there was no extensive study guide that I could purchase, I have printed out a six-page “About This Test” booklet from the Web. It contains sample questions and answers and lists the types of things that will be covered, specifically:

Analysis of Student Language Production
Linguistic Theory
Teaching Methods and Techniques
Assessment Techniques and Cultural Issues
Professional Issues

Under each of these topics are listed dozens of subtopics, for example, under Linguistic Theory are listed phonetic transcriptions; bound, free, and derivational morphemes; code-switching; communicative competence; and theorists such as Krashen and Cummins.

Today I used the metacognitive strategy of advance organization because I previewed what I was going to have to learn. I reviewed the list of every topic and subtopic and underlined the ones that I don’t think I already know inside and out – in other words, the ones I have to study. This amounts to more than 100 topics. It is pretty disheartening!

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Today I used the cognitive strategy of grouping to figure out what I was going to deal with first. I decided to go with the area where I am weakest, which is phonology, including phonetic transcriptions and place and manner of articulation. I placed out of this class because I have an MA in Linguistics – but I obtained that degree several years ago and forget the details of phonology. Since I did not keep any of my books or notes from my Masters (big mistake!), I need to obtain the information anew. I asked a classmate, who gave me some Web links, and I asked Dr. Robbins, who directed me to her Web site for TRED 256. By asking questions I was using the social/affective strategy of questioning for clarification.

Once I got the information, I printed it out and looked it over. The knowledge started flooding back! I put the material in a folder for later reference.

Friday, June 1, 2007

Today I decided to write out the key aspects of the main teaching theories, methods, and approaches, with the names of the men who developed them (cognitive strategy of note taking). I made sure to include the names of the methods mentioned in the guide that I printed out. Some of this information was in my notes from my Educational Psychology class so I pulled out those notes.

I also looked at my textbooks for topics listed in the guide such as “components needed in a lesson when teaching a skill discretely or integratively” and wrote notes on those.

One of the sample questions in the guide gave a table of contents in an ESOL textbook and asked if it was organized in a hierarchical, grammatical, notional-functional, or core way. I could not answer the question so I did research on all the terms (cognitive strategy of resourcing) and took notes.

I put all of the notes into a folder.

Monday, June 4, 2007

I wasn’t able to study over the weekend because of homework for my two classes. I am starting to feel a bit panicked because I am still pulling together information but have not yet started to memorize anything.

There is one other area where I know nothing, and that is “legal foundations for ESOL programs, including Lau vs. Nichols,” as the Praxis II mini-study guide states. I used the Internet (cognitive strategy of resourcing) to find out what Lau vs. Nichols was, printed it out, and put it in my folder.

Tonight I listened for the first time to the Web sites that my classmate told me about, where a person speaks the various sounds in the IPA while I looked at the symbols. How can I possibly memorize all of these symbols? I can’t. I decide to learn what I think are the main vowel symbols (metacognitive strategy of selective attention).
Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Today I decided I am finished gathering information. Now it is time to learn it all and memorize as much as necessary. I took all my notes, punched holes in them and put them into a green three-hole binder. I did not put the material in any particular order, since I have to learn it all and it won’t be in order on the test.

During the time at my high school that I am not teaching or assisting this week, I will study (metacognitive strategy of self-management).

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Today I was able to study for about two hours while at school. I worked on about the first third of the notebook. The way I study is to first read the material. Some of it I have learned in class already and I just need to review it once or twice to internalize it. However, some of the material is “new,” which means I never learned it in class, e.g., the Lau court case, or pidginization, which I had not yet learned about, or the International Phonetic Alphabet, which I knew once but have forgotten. For the latter items, I will circle or underline them since I really need to memorize them. Then I will study them, one at a time, and try to write them down on a separate piece of paper without looking at my notes. I will repeat the study/write process until I can write the information without looking at my notes at all (cognitive strategy: summarizing).

Friday, June 8, 2007

I spent most of the afternoon and evening studying. I used the strategy mentioned above to plow through the rest of my notebook. In addition, to learn the IPA vowels, I drew a picture that shows an abstract version of the mouth and the high, low, front, and back vowels. By doing this I was using the cognitive strategy of imagery.

For some of the items I needed to know, I used mnemonic devices as a strategy. For example, for the characteristics of communicative language teaching, I remember PUFFS: pragmatic and authentic material, unrehearsed discourse, fluency, facilitator (teacher), and strategies.

Saturday, June 9, 2007

Test day. In terms of learning and testing environment, UDC is rather appalling. The concrete is breaking apart, walls are peeling, there is minimal air circulation, and there is an unbelievably foul smell that permeates the hallways and the classroom where we took our test. The CD and/or boom box that were used to play the sound portion of the test failed midstream and it took a while to get things working again.

Before the test, I was a bit anxious. I took my green notebook to cram during the half hour I had in advance of the start time. I used the social/affective strategy of self-talk to tell myself I would do all right.

The test was difficult. Using the metacognitive strategy of self-assessment, I am fairly happy with what and how I studied. There was nothing I chose to study that I should have learned more thoroughly. My shortfalls had to do with not selecting certain things to put in my notebook to study, such as more court cases other than Lau and more IPA symbols. I missed a couple of questions by not having done that. A few questions used terminology that I did not recognize and now that the test is over, I don’t even remember what the terms were. I certainly missed those questions.

The good news is that one needs to get only 55% of the questions correct in order to pass the test, and I am pretty confident that I did at least that well. I will know in another week or two.

Melissa Cummins' Learning Strategies Diary

June 15, 2007

My husband and I bought a house two weeks ago. Since then, I have finished the school year, attended all the 8th grade end-of-year activities, taken 45 6th graders on a weeklong trip to the mountains of North Carolina, and attended class. Today I am sitting down to survey the house, finally. During the last 2 hours, I have made 3 lists. A “to buy” list, a “to fix” list, and a “to do” list. My next task is to break down each list into the specific stores to shop in, the supplies we will need for fixing the house, and the days I will accomplish the “to do” list tasks. I am currently the queen of the organizational planning learning strategy.
This is an inherited strategy from my mom, who kept lists of everything in our house. The lists worked for her and now they are working for me. My lists are not color coded or, frankly, very well organized, but they do keep me focused during my short breaks to help me maximize my time. The key for now will be to not lose the lists ☺

June 16, 2007 (am)

My husband and I are reviewing our “to buy” list today. My parents are coming into town next week and we don’t have a stove, a grill, or a microwave. This will be a problem when we have to eat cereal and sandwiches for a week with my parents. Instead of hitting every store in town, we are using advance organization to look at the available models on the internet. We can skim a variety of websites and preview the available models. We will then call up local stores to determine the availability of the different models. We are managing all this information using note-taking.

June 16, 2007 (pm)

We are now the proud owners of a stove and a grill. Well, we will be the owners of a stove when it is delivered on Tuesday. The comparison shopping paid off in terms of the price of the stoves. However, we ran into a small problem when we went to finalize the prices. Gas stoves have additional charges for installation due to the danger of the gas lines. The fees ranged from $169-$400 for installation. We had to add this information to our notes to determine the real best price. Even our advanced planning did not prepare us for all the details of purchasing appliances. Fortunately our notes allowed us to quickly adjust for the price of installation.

June 17, 2007

Moving from a 450 square foot condo into a real house has left a few empty rooms. Today I convinced my husband to go shopping for armchairs for our living room. Selective attention was our best friend as we ran around Northern Virginia furniture stores for 6 hours. We don’t leave the District often, especially to venture to the far suburbs. However, our best bet for comparison shopping for furniture we can afford is in the ‘burbs. We were able to maximize our time by focusing only on leather armchairs.
We also knew that we wanted chairs with the same overall shape as our couch. So, we could quickly glance over the leather armchairs and narrow down our choice even further. In some stores, we did not even bother to sit in any of the chairs because none of the options matched our idea. Our selective attention allowed us to find two excellent chairs that will match our couch.
Now that we are home, we are using imagery to choose from our top two options. We have made phantom chairs by cutting out newspaper to match the size of the base of the chairs. We are moving them around the living room to determine which chairs will fit the best. It has become clear that the armchairs from Belfort are the best fit. I will be making the trip back to the store tomorrow to make our order!

June 19, 2007

My lists are shrinking now that we have picked up the blinds for the upstairs bedrooms. My parents are coming tomorrow night and they will be pleased that their every move will not be visible to our neighbors! As usual, the packaging ensured us that the installation would be a breeze. Of course, the lack of installation instructions made it a bit more difficult! We used the resourcing strategy to search the internet for instructions. We were saved when we found a site with installation instructions for our specific make and model of blinds. Hurray for technology!
Armed with the instructions, my husband and I used cooperation to install the blinds. He pre-drilled the holes while I followed with the brackets. The blinds snapped into place fairly easily. My husband then opened the next package while I adjusted the blinds to ensure that they worked properly. The installation went smoothly from that point.

June 21, 2007

Our stove was just delivered. The new stove replaced a stove that was only two years old. We were surprised that such a new appliance could leak gas. Time for another learning strategy: questioning for clarification. I peppered the poor technician with questions about gas stoves. What can we do to extend the life expectancy of our stove? Why would a new stove leak? How can we check for leaks on our new stove? I asked him to check twice for leaks. I was never nervous in our condo because I didn’t realize that new stoves can leak gas. Now I will probably be a bit overly cautious.

Reflecting back over my week, I see that learning strategies are everywhere. The events of the week definitely tested my abilities to pre-plan and then execute that plan. Our house is coming together and my list is down to three things. More importantly, the learning strategies allowed me to whittle down my list efficiently and gave me some time to enjoy my break.

John's Trials and Tribulations Learning Amharic

John’s Trials and Tribulations Learning Amharic

DAY ONE….
Well, I broke down and bought a book/CD set called colloquial Amharic – The Complete Course for Beginners. It was wickedly expensive - $85! – but it’s seems to be the only available Amharic language course around.
This is BEGINNING Amharic? In the first couple of pages, they have covered THE ENTIRE WRITING SYSTEM, AND my, your, his, her – possessive phrases. ( In my beginning ESOL 1 text book, possessives don’t come until Unit 4! ) Wow. I have a lot to learn…

Anyway, the book starts into the writing system. It’s called the “fidel”. It’s a really complex writing system – a syllabary. It’s similar to Japanese – it’s not an alphabet as such, but rather each symbol represents a syllable. There are 276 shapes to learn! It is frustrating – I can’t even tell if the shapes are right side up, or upside down! The system is divided into orders of ä, u, i, a, ï, and o.

Amharic is like Japanese - it has it’s own set of symbols for numbers as well. Interesting!...

ENTRY TWO:
The history of Amharic in the book is fascinating. Amharic is spoken by 17.5 million people and is understood throughout the country of Ethiopia. Despite it’s long history, it has only been the written language of Ethiopia since the second half of the 19th century. It is a Semitic language, in the same family as Arabic and Hebrew…

ENTRY THREE:
…I am going over the book. The sounds in Amharic are quite different than in English, like Mongolian, so I can handle this. Amharic has “golottalized” consonants, kind of like what we have in English in BOTTLE and BUTTON.
… I’m really not liking this book! They stop writing out the English pronunciation with the readings by Unit 6! (There are 14 Units in the book.) I guess by Unit 6, you should be able to read things fluently! AND NO PICTURES!
Speaking and listening are so much easier for me! I think I should focus more on conversational Amharic, rather than reading and writing. This book doesn’t even have pictures!
I think I will put an advertisement on Craigslist for a private Amharic tutor. I would really like private lessons, maybe once a week…

ENTRY FOUR:
I was digging around and found an old National Geographic with an featured article about Ethiopia. This is great! I really want to learn more about the culture – about the food, the houses, the people – as well as the language. There is this old church in the article, in the town of Gondor, hewn entirely out of rock…

I am going to be downtown next week. I should stop by the TEMPO bookstore. They specialize in all different kinds of foreign language books. They have a ton of great stuff – dictionaries in Mongolian, language tapes in Slovak.. Maybe they have an easier “Spoken Amahric” language series available

ENTRY FIVE:
Well, I just got back from TEMPO. They have some really great stuff for teaching English. All kinds of ESL Resource books. They even have a translator called a “Quictionary” – it’s a pen-like scanner that you can scan any text and it will translate into the foreign language! I could really use that for Japanese, since I have difficulty reading kanji! The problem is that they are very expensive - $200! They don’t have any in stock, anyway. Oh well! Maybe, I will invest in one later.

But back to the Amharic – they ONLY have the one series for learning Amharic. No luck.

Good news! I just checked my email, and I think I found someone who might be interested in giving me private Amharic lessons! This is great! Hopefully, I will be able to actually be learn to communicate in Amharic, learn about the culture, learn some new vocabulary, order food in a restaurant…

TO BE CONTINUED!......

Learning Strategies Diary

Thursday, June 14th -



My learning strategies for creating our research-based expert group presentation are varied and consistent with how I learn most things. First, attacking the research articles was somewhat intimidating considering I still have not taken the quantitative methods course yet. I read the introduction first and then skim the articles and look at the tables. Then, I read the conclusion. Second, I read the whole article again (sometimes out loud) and highlight what I think is important. Afterwards, I summarize what I learned and note what I had questions about.



I think I learn the best by summarizing and asking myself questions. However, many times, during the weekly readings, this step gets skipped due to lack of time.



When I don't understand part of the research, I read it again out loud and slowly. Because the field-based vocabulary is still relatively new to me, it takes me longer to digest. Words such as "attrition" and "coefficient" and "heuristic" aren't part of my working vocabulary, so I have to think about them as I read. I have to refer to my notes or the book.

In order to learn the information to present, we made predictions and summarized from the research articles. We "personalized" the information by trying to relate it to our teaching experiences. It is nice to "cooperate" or work with others because it creates a dialogue out of the information which, in turn, makes you more apt to absorb and understand it.

Friday, June 15th.

I drop Isabella at her daycare. We have established a routine. I have to let her carry her lunchbox and tell her the whole time in the car that we are going to school. When we get there, she has to help me put the food in the refrigerator. I am learning to make a quick exit, but she still cries and reaches out for me, and it is extremely difficult.

My main learning experience right now is trying to be a mother. I am learning how to manage my two year old.

When I take her to daycare, she cries. She is also starting to push other kids and, occasionally me, and say"STOP". She also likes to cry and lay on the floor, fight not to put on her diaper, and she hates to get in her car seat or bath. These are all relatively new behaviors that concern me, so I have been trying to learn how to cope.

First, I know and refer to the background knowledge: She was born in Brazil and lived with only me until she was one and a half when we came here and pluncked her in daycare during the day. She stays with her dad at night.

I can "predict" that most of this behavior is normal "two" behavior. However, some of it could be rebelling from the lack of attention. It could also be "spoiled".

I "observe patterns" to see when she is typically exhibiting these behaviors and why. When she is dropped off or picked up at daycare, when she is hungry or tired, and when she is around other children. Many times, I take "notes" to remember what she is doing and when. I also take notes on what other people say.

"Cooperating" has helped me learn some. I cooperate with her teachers, her father, my mother and her school. We try to figure out what to do together. I learn from my friends who have small children. I try the techniques that they say or I use what they say to rule out certain options.

Finally, I consult books, magazines, and the internet to try to find out what to do. I am reading "Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline," by Becky A. Bailey and "How to talk so your kids will listen" whenever I have time. They suggest using "positive intent" (assuming that they awill do what you ask of them if presented correctly and using lots of options to give them some control of the situation. I was struggling with time-out because that is what I had learned. This book suggests against time out. My mother paddled us, so I chose not to consult my mom on this matter.

When the behavior occurs, I definitely engage in self-talk to calm myself down and to think about the options that i have learned. I have established routines that seem to help and giving her options does as well. Explaining why you do things also seems to make sense to her.

However, I am still having a hard time learning a strategy to deal with the pushing of other kids and ugly faces that she makes at them.

Saturday, June 16th

We went to a barbeque at our friends. Isabella stayed on my lap almost the entire time. However, she did eat which is good, and she wanted to see the cat. I remembered to leave before 7:30 because our routine has her in bed by 8:30 after eating and bath.

Sunday, June 17th

We met with my friends from NY who have a one and a half year old. They have recently had a newborn baby boy. Isabella was extremely curious about this and didn't push or make ugly faces. I made a inference, drew a conclusion and predicted that I will not have any more children based on this breakfast.

Yesterday, June 19th

We went to the grocery store to get food. When Isabella sees things that she wants in the store. I let her pick them up and look at them. We appreciate them together, and I learned to ask her to put them back in their houses. She seems okay with this. As of yet, we have never had a problem with "objects" like this.


In conclusion, I am learning everyday, mostly by trial and error. I do a lot of intuitive work and mental note-taking about what I think works. However, the books do seem to think that there are right and wrong ways of doing things. I always have to consult the doctor to see if she is actually sufficiently cognitively developed to handle something like time out and understand a "consequence" like this.

Soy el Sombrero Pensante Carter, Tricia, & CRJ

Harry Potter Sorting Hat Song

Oh, podrás pensar que no soy bonito
pero no juzgues por lo que ves.
Me comeré a mí mismo si puedes encontrar
un sombrero más inteligente que yo.
Puedes tener bombines negros,
sombreros altos y elegantes.
Pero yo soy el Sombrero Seleccionador de Hogwarts
y puedo superar a todos.
No hay nada escondido en tu cabeza
que el Sombrero Seleccionador no pueda ver.
Así que pruébame y te diré
dónde debes estar:
Puedes pertenecer a Gryffindor,
donde habitan los valientes.
Su osadía, temple y caballerosidad
ponen aparte a los de Gryffindor.
Puedes pertenecer a Hufflepuff,
donde son justos y leales.
Esos perseverantes Hufflepuff
de verdad no temen el trabajo pesado.
O tal vez a la antigua sabiduría de Ravenclaw,
si tienes una menta dispuesta,
porque los de inteligencia y erudición
siempre encontrarán allí a sus semejantes.
O tal vez en Slytherin
harás tus verdaderos amigos.
Esa gente astuta utiliza cualquier medio
para lograr sus fines
¡Así que pruébame! ¡No tengas miedo!
¡Y no recibirás una bofetada!
Estás en buenas manos (aunque yo no las tenga).
Porque soy el Sombrero Pensante.

Learning Strategies Diary, part 2

Learning Strategies Diary

5/25/07

Situation: Substitute teaching assignment

Metacognitive Strategies: I used the strategy of planning/organizing to learn the lessons plans by reading the notes left by the absent teacher. I also rehearsed the plans step-by-step.
I managed the learning environment by turning off the overhead light and opening the blinds.

Task-Based Strategies: I used yellow highlighter to draw my attention to things I didn't want to forget in the written plans.

I accessed two information source when I had to learn the whereabouts of a student in order to pull him out for ESOL instruction.

5/26/07

Situation: Golf Tournament

Metacognitive Strategies: I identified several problems from the outset-I didn't know the pairings(who was playing with whom); I didn't know the layout of the golf course; the leader board seemed like L2 to me!

Task-Based Strategies: I found an information sheet that had the names of the pairings and their tee times. This same sheet had a map of the course. I connected the images on the map to concrete places (water hazards, flags on putting greens, buildings, etc.) I also used the sheet to make connections to the leader board. Thus, I was able to determine the standings and the scores.

5/27/07

Situation: Rolling Thunder event

Metacognitive Strategies: I planned the event by going to the organization's website to get the time and location. I accessed a website with a map of downtown DC to determine which subway station was closest to the planned stakeout. Afterwards, I evaluated the field trip and decided that I would definitely take more water next time and a thicker blanket for resting and picnicking.

Task-Based Strategies: Once we reached the Metro station, I had to calculate the cost of adding value to an existing SmarTrip versus buying a new SmarTrip versus buying a farecard. I used the information that the farecard machine gave me to make my decision. (There was a lot of self-talk going on here.)

Morphemes & Stuff

Please forgive any errors...this is from a reading response I did for 227.

Emergent Literacy:

Children begin to develop written language knowledge from the moment they are first exposed to reading and writing at home during their preschool years.

Reading Readiness:

Traditional view of reading instruction that assumes that children must be able to perform certain auditory, visual, psychomotor, and linguistic tasks in order to show the maturity needed for reading instruction.

Phoneme:

The smallest unit of sound that makes a difference in meaning in a language.

A member of the set of the smallest units of speech that serve to distinguish one utterance from another in a language or dialect - the /p/ of English pat and the /f/ of English fat are two different phonemes.

Morpheme

A meaningful linguistic unit consisting of a word, such as man, or a word element, such as -ed in walked, that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts. (Minimal meaningful language unit; it cannot be divided into smaller meaningful units .)

Grapheme:

The letter or letter combination that represents a sound (phoneme).

Phonemic Awareness:

Awareness of individual sounds that constitute spoken words.

Phonics:

A method of teaching people to read in which they are taught to recognize the sounds that letters represent.

Onset:

The initial consonant in a word or syllable, followed by a vowel-consonant sequence (the rime).

Ex.: gain

g – onset
ain- rime

Digraphs:

Two consonants together that make one sound (th, ch, ph).

Blends:

Two consonants together that blend their sounds (cl, bl, tr, cr, pr).


What is the critical period hypothesis?

Linguist Eric Lenneberg (1964) stated that the crucial period of language acquisition ends around the age of 12 years. He claimed that if no language is learned before then, it could never be learned in a normal and fully functional sense." (Wikipedia, 2006) This theory became known as The Critical Period Hypothesis and it refers to the specific time period in which language learning best occurs.

Prescriptive grammar

Rules of grammar as prescribed by grammarians; i.e., what the rules should be as opposed to what they are.

Descriptive grammar

Observation of the use of grammar, with no value judgment as to what the rules should be.

I first began learning a language in sixth grade. I was the first generation of students in my hometown to participate in the “Sixth Grade Experience.” Students who scored well on reading comprehension exams had the opportunity to take French and Spanish for a half-year each. The point was to expose us to the languages so that we would be able to make an educated decision about which language we would chose to study the following year and throughout highschool. Although I began studying a language in sixth grade and I continued my studies through highschool, I was not passionate about learning a language until about half way through college.

As I reflect on my experience as a second language learner, I realize that I am probably not the typical foreign language learner. In highschool, I opted out from taking the AP Spanish class. I was not interested at the time, I didn’t think it was important, and I was attempting to avoid as much homework as possible for my senior year of highschool. However, when I began college, I chose to take a Spanish class during my freshman year. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to major in, but I had always been interested in Spanish, and I liked the idea of being able to speak a second language. My first college course was a disaster. I was in an advanced grammar course, taught by a native speaker. I was the only student who was not a native speaker in the class, and the only freshman. In fact, the other students were all seniors, majoring in Spanish. The level that the native speakers brought to the class made the whole course far too challenging for my language ability, and it actually caused me to become disinterested in learning the language. As my college education continued, I decided that I wanted to study abroad. Since I was almost done with my graduation requirements for my chosen major, my academic advisor suggested that I study abroad in a country where I did not speak the language. I was able to study in Spain because I had taken that one course freshman year that was a requirement for the program. It was the experience in Spain that changed my entire language learning experience.

I learned a lot in my classes abroad, but it was my experiences with native speakers that taught me the most. I wanted to be able to communicate, especially with my host family, and I learned more from that experience than I could in any classroom. I was inspired from this experience, and when I returned, I decided to pick up a second major in Spanish. My abilities had drastically improved from the immersion experience, and I felt much more comfortable and confident in the language classes. I carried what I learned and my experience with me in the years following graduation, and this served as part of the motivation for me to become a language teacher. I am passionate about learning Spanish and experiencing the associated cultures that I hope to pass this on to other language learners. For me, the most exciting thing about learning a language is learning the culture associated with the language. It is a personal belief that I hold that one cannot truly understand the culture without understanding the associated

LANGUAGE LEARNING REFLECTIONS

I love learning foreign languages! When it comes to learning a foreign language, for me, listening and modeling are key. Learning the elemental sounds - the basic and unique units of the spoken language – is the most important and this even supercedes connecting meaning to the sounds. This is not so easy, since there are often no direct equivalents to the sounds we have in English. When first learning a foreign language, I will begin with the basic phrases like “Hello”, “Yes”, “No” and “Thank you”. But later on, when learning vocabulary, I will sometimes acquire words without understanding their meanings right away. It sometimes happens that with street names, or names of cities, or towns, or people’s names for example, I will have an “Ah-HA!” moment later on, and understand that the word is not only just a name, like “John”, but it actually means something, too, like “Rose” or “Sunday”.
I also find that MUSIC is a great way to learn languages. After learning individual words and phrases, music really helps with learning intonation and patterns within sentences, and helps me model them authentically. I find that there is an amazing retention factor to music. And of course if you can sing in a foreign language, native speakers are always impressed and will be much more open to talking and communicating with you.
My foreign language strengths are speaking and communicating, rather than reading and writing. Writing Kanji in Japanese is very challenging, and after years of study, unfortunately, I still only have really learned the very basic characters. I am not a visual learner – it is a real challenge for me, for example to read a Japanese newspaper, despite the fact I have studied Japanese for a number of years. The characters all start to look alike after a while!
For me, the difficulty arises when attaching meaning to the visual characters. Japanese characters are extremely complicated with some containing up to 20 or more strokes! In addition, each character in Japanese has an “on” or “kun” reading – the Japanese or the original Chinese pronunciation, so each Japanese character can be pronounced in more than one way. Consequently, it regularly happens that I can read a sentence in Japanese and understand it, but not be able to read it aloud, because I have not connected the visual to the pronunciation.
When learning a language, I tend to “chunk” information, clumping words and phrases together and learn them as one unit of meaning. It is difficult - nearly impossible to dissect each and every word in a sentence and define each word in before speaking, so “chunking” is a much more effective and efficient a way to process information.
In addition, when first learning a language, my strategy is to seek out kids to talk to. For me, children are the most effective teachers. Children use simple “baby-language” and will laugh when you make a mistake, not correct you and try and explain the mistake as adults do. Acquiring language from children comes in a low-anxiety environment, where you can learn and have fun without the fear of making mistakes.
As I wander through the Borders and Barnes and Noble through their foreign language sections, I am always amused at some of the titles of the books - “Learn Italian in 10 minutes a day!” , “The Fast Way to German”, and “Easy Japanese”, which I think is an oxymoron. In reality, no one can learn a language literally overnight, and it takes a lot of practice and diligence to learn to read, speak and write a foreign language.
I met an elderly gentleman few years ago as I was beginning to learn Japanese, an American, who spoke amazing Japanese. He told me that it is easy to learn the basics in Japanese, but it is very difficult to learn Japanese well. It is my constant goal, to slowly, over time, learn grow and develop my foreign language capacities.

My language learning experience (reposted under new account!) :)

My language learning experience has been affected by a multitude of events and circumstances that have motivated and encouraged me to appreciate and love learning foreign languages. As the daughter of Uruguayan parents, I was raised in both the English and Spanish language. My parents insisted that my sisters and I speak Spanish at home, particularly the dinner table, while English was spoken outside of the home and while doing school work. Fortunately, the combination worked wonders. I grew up speaking both languages fluently, without an accent in either language (or so I’m told). In pursuit of becoming trilingual, I look German in high school and found it rather easy to learn a new language. Perhaps it was my knowledge of grammatical patterns or my comfort with practicing pronunciation without the fear of making mistakes that made language learning fun. It was in my German class that I realized that I learn languages best through emulating others. My German teacher was the only native speaker I knew of, therefore, I would make a conscious effort to study her accent, pitch, etc. and copy what I heard. While I was in college, I spent a year abroad in Spain. Though I am a native Spanish speaker, it was amazing to be surrounding by the distinct Spanish of the Spaniards (known as Castilian, although many in the southern portion of South America claim to speak Castilian as well). Being immersed in a form of Spanish that was unnatural to me was very tricky! While basic communication was relatively simple, certain words and phrases had different meanings- and many times, I learned that the hard way. While studying Moroccan Arabic in Morocco, I was fully immersed in a language and culture that I was not very familiar with. Linguistically, Spanish and Arabic have several similarities, however, I spent several hours a day listening to Moroccan people speak. I would not speak English and forced myself to use the little vocabulary I did learn on a day to day basis. A few of my classmates and I would dialog as much as possible in Arabic. We would also practice our oral and writing skills with Moroccans who were attempting to do the same in learning English. Once I came back, I attempted to continue my study of the language through the Rosetta Stone program. While I was impressed with the learning strategies used, I found that I gained more through personal interaction and feedback rather than following a computer program with a variety of limitations. While there are amazing teachers who are non-native fluent in any given language, I believe that having native language-speaking teachers, or more importantly, immersing myself into a specific language and culture is the way in which I have succeeded most in my language learning experiences. I have yet to master any language as well as English and Spanish but I have not given up just yet!

How did I learn French?

For as long as I can remember, I have always loved school. The feeling of being in a classroom, diving heart and mind first into subjects presented by accomplished professionals, and striving to obtain excellence in my education was immaculate. My drive as a young girl and young adult was to grasp as much information in each subject. Out of all my classes my French class stood out the most. In the Caribbean as you entered into secondary school you were required to take both Spanish and French. I preferred French. To me it sounded better because the teacher was more exciting. During class she would make us recite the alphabet, or other text she gave us to memorize over and over again. She would walk up and down the aisles making sure we were all speaking.

My first experience of learning a second language was definitely grammar based. But because of the craziness of the teacher it seemed like fun to me. She would randomly call students to recite things or write sentences on the board. Or she would just start telling us stories in French. I would not fully understand the stories but I loved listening to her and watching her illustrate with crazy gestures. So from my first experience in my L2 I developed my skill in listening and reading.

By the time I got to high school, my level of understanding dropped. This I think happened for a number of reasons. There was not as much authentic input during class. With my first experience I was hearing the language constantly, from the teacher and also when we had to recite. But in high school the language was only required when we had to turn in an assignment. The teacher did not make us speak in the target language very often and neither did the teacher. Another reason was the change in my environment. I moved from St. Vincent to Maryland, and that was enough for me to forget about my L2. That wasn’t a priority for me to be assimilated into the American culture so I was not motivated to use the language outside of class. The one good thing about my high school experience was that I had excellent grades in French. I am not sure how I did that.

I got to college and I didn’t know what to choose as my major. My L2 came to my rescue. Since I had excellent grades in French I was advised to continue on that tract. Now that my L2 has given me my purpose for being in college I was motivated to learn the language even more.

It wasn’t until college that I got serious about fully getting the language. What I did was I listened to how the teacher spoke; their accents, and how they used the grammar I was learning. I wanted to hear how they were saying it before I attempted to say. I would practice over and over in my room before I had to do presentations. The more I heard it being used in context the more comfortable I was using it to communicate. That’s why I have a hard time with the “passé simple” which is a tense no longer spoken today.

As I reflect on my learning French I think I need both the grammar-translation method as well as the communicative language approach. I need a balance of the two; learning the rules of the language then applying those rules in authentic situations. This happened when I did a semester in Paris. I stayed with a host family and I also took a grammar class at the Sorbonne. In this experience which lasted for about 3.5 months I felt I learned the most in my L2, compared to the previous 7 years of learning it in school. I had to figure out how to use the metro in Paris, or buy food. I had to communicate to my host family. When I got lost I had to ask for directions in French. In the classroom all instruction was in French. There was enough input for me to produce in French and that happened everyday for three months. I was the most confident at the end of that 3 months; at the airport I was able to ask for help with my ticket and baggage all in French without any mistakes.

Today I am not as confident.

Reflection on self as a language learner

I believe my first exposure to a second languge was in the seventh grade with Mrs. Timmons. I don't know why but there was something that just clicked for me. It wasn't a formal Spanish class, it was called FLEX. The county just wanted students to have exposure to different cultures. So in this program we learned the basic greetings, spent a little time in the language laboratory, and did the common ritual of visiting a Spanish restaurant. When I graduated from 8th grade I received an award for Best Spanish Student!

In high school my Spanish dropped off. My teacher wasn't very enthusiastic as in middle school, so I did enough to get by. It wasn't until college where I blossomed (hehe)into a young adult and discovered that language learning was something of interest to me. I took the basics, Spanish 101..., my first two years. In my junior I began taking advanced courses in the language. I gained a better understanding of both the language and the culutre.

When the opportunity presented itself, I arranged my financial aide and spent a semester in Seville, Spain. Looking back on it now, I wish I studied a year instead of a semester. The time spent immersed in the language and culture are invaluable. Having to use the language as a lifestyle was and is an advantage in learning the language to it fullest. My host family were generous in their hospitality and provided me with every opportunity to partake in cultural activities. I made some friends there who helped me understand the dialect of the region. It was quite difficult to understand Spanish speaking to someone with a heavy Sevillan accent.

After returning from a culture shock, I did the ultimate, I moved into the Spanish house on campus. My friends, including my twin sister, had a good time laughing at me and stating that I never returned from Spain. Whenever I would visit them at their dorms, they would always tell me to go back to Spain (aka the Spanish house). I did not want to loose what I had learned so residing their was my only option. In the house we were to only speak Spanish (a rule that was not heavily enforced). There was also an exchange student from Spain who helped us in carrying on our conversations. Again, this was an experience that was invaluable to me.

Upon completion of college I began teaching Spanish at a local high school. In order to maintain my Spanish I kept my tv on the Spanish channel, and read as much as I could. That lasted about one year and then I decided to aim high with the Air Force. I did not return to my high school, rather I became an ESL teacher for grades K-6. That was fun! To witness their little minds growing and learning due to my teaching is one reason why I have decided to focus my graduate studies on foreign language and ESL.

After four years of going into the blue(I love those air force logo:-) I had no choice but to return to teaching. This profession is the driving force behind my language learning. It disciplines me in maintaining my second language. I often find myself now being more comfortable in speaking Spanish to and for people who are unable to communicate their needs.

Well that's me!

Stuggles With Spanish

My struggle to learn Spanish has been a long, arduous task that has been worth every ounce of effort that I have put into it. At this point in my life, having successfully arrived at the stage where I can comfortably read, write and speak the language has opened my eyes to a whole new world. A world that without having gone through this struggle would have never been available to me.

Starting in the 8th grade, I attended Spanish classes as a student in MCPS. Leaving in the 12th grade, I knew little more Spanish then when I had entered the system 5 years earlier. I attribute that lack of success to not caring and being a classic case of “doing just enough to not have the teacher notice my failures”.

In college I began to see the professional and cultural importance of learning Spanish. I was an International Relations major and not only was it a graduation requirement, it was a means to end. I wanted to study and live abroad.

Arriving in Spain and being forced to communicate with the natives made me realize how much Spanish I didn’t know. Throughout my travels during that year, making friends with Spaniards and attending classes at the Univ. of Alicante I picked up the language relatively well. However, as I learned a few years later, that was not the case.

Arrive to 2004. Stepping off the airplane in Tegucigalpa, Honduras was an entirely different ballgame. There, as a Peace Corps Volunteer and a representative of the United States, the expectations were much higher. I quickly realized how limited my language abilities were and how much effort and practice it would take to have a meaningful and productive experience. Fortunately the language program was stellar and provided many hours of experiential training with a small teacher to student ratio.

At this point it all seems worth while. The benefits of knowing Spanish and understanding Latino culture has raised my awareness of the world and of myself. Hopefully, as a Spanish teacher I will have the opportunity to inspire others and to open their eyes to how vast the world can be.

Reflection on Self as a Language Learner

My first exposure to a language was in junior high school when my mother insisted that I take Latin. She had taken Latin herself and believed strongly that it would help me on the verbal section of the SAT. I had a good teacher, but I couldn’t really connect with the language. It was all reading and writing, and lots of translations. I hardly remember any of the Latin I studied those two years in junior high. Like the saying goes… “amo, amas, amat,…there was some more but I forgot.”

When I started high school, I decided to take French. I just loved the way the language sounded. Plus, the Spanish teacher at my high school was notoriously bad, so that was enough to steer me away from that language. I loved French. I think it was my teacher. She was young and energetic and did everything she could to get us to speak as much as possible. While I was in high school, my family hosted an exchange student from Sweden one year and the following year an exchange student from Denmark. This made me want to become an exchange student myself. My mother refused to let me go abroad though before I finished high school, so the summer after I graduated I packed my bags and headed to a tiny village (pop. 120) in the foothills of the Alps. I remember sitting at the dinner table that first night with my French host family, feeling tongue-tied, lost and confused (despite three years of high school French), and wondering how I was ever going to be able to communicate with them, much less survive for a year in a French high school. The first two months were really hard. I nodded a lot and said “oui” to things I should have said “non” to like “Voulez-vous des cervelles de veau?” (translation: would you like some calf brain?) But it didn’t take long before my language skills improved to a level where I was able to freely converse with my host family and friends and participate in class discussions. The fact that my host family had 5 children really helped my language acquisition. They were constantly talking and badgering me with questions which forced me to talk. They also loved to correct my grammar mistakes and teach me new vocabulary.

I continued to study French in college and went back to France to study in Paris for two semesters my junior year. I had three particular professors on the program that exuded a love of the French language and had an amazing way of passing that on to their students. A few years after graduating from college, I returned to Paris to work as a teaching assistant in the English and North American Studies Department of the Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne. Teaching my native tongue to French speakers gave me a new understanding of language learning. I thoroughly enjoyed the interactions with my students and the challenge of trying to find ways to make fine-tuning their English skills fun and interesting.

The summer between the two years I was teaching in Paris, I spent a month studying intensive Spanish at a small language school in Malaga, Spain. The teachers were great and used lots of situational role plays to make us use the vocabulary and grammar that we were learning. I lived with a delightful Spanish lady. I have fond memories of watching Bay Watch dubbed in Spanish on television with her and attempting to answer her questions about life in the United States. In the month that I was in Spain, I was able to get to a level where I could understand quite well and speak at an intermediate level.

Upon returning to Paris, I wanted to continue to improve my Spanish so I put an advertisement up in the American Church to do a language exchange with a Spanish speaker. A young Venezuelan woman responded to my ad and we met weekly to exchange lessons. It was a lot of fun. I would teach her English for an hour and then we would switch and she would teach me Spanish. She had taught before and had good materials to support the lessons and the one-on-one interaction was great. We continued this about 6 months until she moved outside of Paris and it was no longer feasible.

Given that I had studied Latin and French, I found Spanish relatively easy to pick up and longed to try something more ‘foreign’. So I decided to try Japanese. I took individual lessons from an American who had lived in Japan for 10 years. I put a lot of effort into learning the hiragana and the katakana and some of the basic kanji. I remember carrying flashcards in the metro to study the letters/kanji during my long commute across Paris to work every day. My teacher was very focused on reading and writing and pronunciation, but not so much on really speaking. He also was very anti-Japanese and was constantly talking negatively about them. This discouraged me and I gave up after about 5 months.

While working in Paris, I met my husband who is Togolese. He was an experienced translator and teacher of French as a foreign language. He has been a big influence on my language acquisition because he is a language lover and speaks several languages fluently and has an intermediate level in several more. We speak to each other in French most of the time, so he has really helped me perfect my French. With him I’m not afraid to make mistakes because I know he isn’t judging me. This has allowed me to try out new words, expressions and structures that I would be afraid to with any other French speaker. He has tried to teach me his mother tongue, Mina, but without much success. I can understand enough to follow the gist of a conversation, but can’t say more than a few words and expressions. Mina is a tonal language and although I can reproduce the tones, I’ve had a hard time remembering which tone is used in which word, much to the amusement of my husband and in-laws.

From Paris, my husband and I moved to Washington, DC for graduate school. While in school, I worked as an English teacher at Berlitz Language Center. I decided to start working on my Spanish again, so I exchanged English lessons for Spanish lessons for about a year with one of my colleagues from Berlitz. I found the Berlitz method to be very effective at drilling vocabulary and grammar into your head. Since then I haven’t had much opportunity to use my Spanish as my husband and I tended to hang out mostly with French speakers so I lost a lot of what I learned. I’ve recently started trying to brush up on my Spanish so that I can speak with the teachers at my children’s bilingual preschool. I’ve been using the Rosetta Stone software and have found it very effective.

A couple of years ago I took an Arabic course for 6 months as I’ve been working on international education and development programs for many Middle Eastern countries for seven years. I loved learning to read and write the alphabet. I really want to perfect that before I continue because I find the transcriptions of the letters/sounds using the English alphabet to be very confusing and inexact. I haven’t worked on my Arabic in a while, as with three small children I just haven’t had the time to devote to it. I am determined to get back to it in the near future though.

I have also tried to learn Wolof (main local language spoken in Senegal) as my husband grew up in Senegal and speaks it well and his family lives there now. I really need to take a class from a native speaker though to get to a good level in the language as I’ve had a hard time finding good materials that I can use to practice Wolof as it is mainly an oral language.

I have loved learning French and the other languages I’ve studied. It has opened up so many doors and has enabled me to communicate with people I would not have been able to otherwise. It has also given me an insight into other cultures as language and culture are intertwined. By studying several languages I’ve learned what methods work best for me. I especially love all of the new advances in technology that have brought such active and exciting ways to learn a language.

Reflection on self as a language learner

My first memory of learning a language is taking French in high school. It was mandatory for college-prep students to take two years of a foreign language. Looking into my desired future of traveling the world, I supposed that French would be the more useful than Spanish.
I dutifully studied French by the audiolingual method favored by my instructor. I became a good reader and writer of the French language. I could also understand spoken French. However, my ability to speak French left something to be desired. Oh, I knew how to conjugate verbs and I had purposely expanded my French vocabulary. My problem was with pronunciation. I don't know how I sounded, but my speech wouldn't have fooled anyone into thinking I was a native speaker.
I continued my French lessons in college, taking three quarters of intermediate French. When I moved on to French civilization, a course taught exclusively in French by a native husband-and-wife duo, I was in too deep. My friend, Phillippe, helped me to keep my head above water in that class, but just barely. I made it to shore with a "C". That grade was below my standards, so I gave up French.
Since I loved languages, I didn't want to not study a language. I turned my attention to Spanish. I learned by the same method that was familiar from high school. There were no native Spanish speakers on campus. The professor of Spanish was the only person I knew who was fluent. It never occurred to me to engage him in conversation outside of the classroom. My average was a "B+" which pleased me.
I began working for the employment office run by the DC government shortly after graduation. When the head honcho learned that I knew some Spanish, he sent me and another woman to take classes at Berlitz. (He had a plan to provide translation services for Spanish-speaking applicants.) Once more, the old audiolingual method surfaced, but with a twist this time. The instructor wanted us to talk about our everyday lives in Spanish. Whoa! Real conversation? Who knew!
Two years later I took a trip to Europe which included a month-long stay in Spain. My friend and I had to stop in Paris on our way to Spain where I managed to pronounce French well enough to get us train tickets and a meal while we waited for our departure. My lasting memory of that experience was that of the rudeness of the French customer service reps I had to deal with at the train station.
Once I reached Spain I had to speak the language everyday in various situations. I met a woman, slightly older than me, who was from Barcelona. We became traveling companions as I had had to leave my American friend in Madrid while I toured the country. She spoke very little English. Therefore, most of our conversation was in Spanish. I eventually accompanied her home to meet her family. I got to the point where I was even dreaming in Spanish. Now that was a little unnerving because I hadn't expected that to happen.
Once I returned to the States, I didn't use Spanish unless I was in the Mt. Pleasant/Adams-Morgan neighborhood which had become a magnet for Hispanics. Now I find myself using it with my Spanish-speaking students. No full-blown conversations, mind you, just a word or two here and there. Plus, I always select the Spanish language menu at the ATM and I read with interest the signage I see in Spanish.
I believe that my limited acquisition of a second language has given me a perspective that leans toward tolerance and patience with my students. I know it's not easy. I just wish they had more time to acquire it rather than try to reach the standards imposed on them by the school systems.

Reflection on Self as a Language Learner

My experiences with learning a second language began in first grade. I remember traveling to the portable classroom where the Spanish teacher was located. Although the small details have blurred with time, I remember a month where she told us the same story every day. The story involved a man coming into a house through a chimney. You could see each of his body parts come through the opening. She had prop body parts that she would tape to the fake chimney in the classroom. In retrospect, the story was reflective of a desire to create an immersion-style classroom using visuals and gestures to communicate meaning. I wish I could remember how the story ended!

In middle and high school, I continued my study of Spanish. My fondest memories are of Señora Pan (Mrs. Baker) who truly lived her love of Spanish in her everyday life. She traveled abroad frequently and hosted exchange students in her home. She used pictures from her trips to highlight the lessons we learned in class. I remember an entire slide show of pictures of store names in Spain. Panadería, dulcería, carnicería… We thought it was a day off, but Señora Pan was a master of sneaking in learning when we least expected it. She just talked and joked with us, using a mixture of natural tenses that always reinforced our recent lessons. Señora Pan’s influence changed my life, leading me to choose the teaching profession.

While in college, I chose to study abroad in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. I was fortunate to select that particular program because Santiago is home to very few English speakers. When traveling to Sevilla and Barcelona, which seemed full of American students, I felt grateful for a town where the focus was not as much on international tourism.

After teaching Spanish to middle school students for four years, I know that I have not maintained the fluency level of my college years. Although my ability to use past subjunctive is shaky, I am an expert on colors, numbers, and TPR vocabulary! To remedy this problem, I have been working hard to read extensively in Spanish. While my students read from my collection of children’s books each week, I read novels that they recognize. They loved to ask me questions as I read Stargirl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Ramona Quimby, Age 8 because they have read these books in English. Although these books are for children, they have the variety of structures and vocabulary I need to grow in my language abilities.

I still can't speak French!!1

French was my first attempt at speaking a language other than English. I went to a French preschool, so I always think that subconsciously pushed me into taking French as a requirement for my middle school language. Of course, being from Ohio, the only other language you could take was Spanish, so I preferred to follow my French fantasy of leaving the midwest. My teacher was very effective in maintaining interest in the language. We did a lot of role playing and hands-on activities. In high school, I continued monotonously taking French classes because I liked the language and I was good at the grammar puzzles, yet I could speak almost no French.

In college, I studied abroad in Tours, France, where I had a knack for writing excellent papers about 14th century French literature and the problems of Modern France. My professors were quite impressed with this and encouraged me to stick with it. French Literature became one of my majors, yet I still could not speak it.

Next, after attending a Peace Corps recruitment fair, it was suggested that I go to a francophone country because I “spoke” French. So, I went to Mali, West Africa, where I refused to speak French because no one in my village spoke French, and it was the language associated with colonization and the “tubabus”. I learned Bambara and Minianka and became quite good at the proverbs. Furthermore, I tried to learn Minianka because it was an oral language used by a minority, and, by learning that language, I would gain the hearts of my villagers. I learned so quickly because it was an emergency situation and I had to speak Bambara to communicate because there was no one to translate anything. It all had to be mimed. I also learned the language from the little children in my village who would come talk to me literally all the time Because I was teaching school in Barbara, I wasn’t intimidated by the children, and they would correct me. Immediate correction of pronunciated mistakes is a wonderful thing that I found that adults won’t do. Adults are trying so hard to understand what you are saying, that they never correct you, and you never get better. I was never corrected in a non-threatening way when I spoke French

When I returned from the Peace Corps, I couldn’t do much with my Minianka and my Bambara, so I wanted to learn Spanish. Because I had learned so much from immersion in Africa, I took a teaching position in Guatemala. Without knowing a word of Spanish, I went there to teach. I asked my friend to give me conversation classes, and I learned to speak with no formal instruction. I also met my husband, and our common language was Spanish, which helped heighten the sense of urgency of learning the language.

However, my husband is Brazilian. So, when we got married, and moved to Brazil, I was faced with Portuguese. Nonetheless, northeastern Brazilian Portuguese is very different from the original language as known. I morphed my Spanish into some kind of Portuguese and decided to take some Masters classes in the University. These classes helped me immensely with reading and writing because I had never had a formal class. When I got a job as a telephone operator in a hotel, I learned more of the provincial accents and pronunciations.
Finally, what really helped me increase my Portuguese vocabulary and fluency was time and breadth of experiences. After having my daughter in Brazil, I had worked in a hotel and in schools, been in the hospital system, the government, and the university. All of these different environments carried with them different procedures, different protocol and different vocabulary.

Ironically, I can speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, Bambara and Minianka, but I still can not write correctly anyone of them. The language that I can write correctly is French, which I can’t speak.

Reflection on Self as a Language Learner

My experience as a language learner dates back to just several years after I was born. My father was in the military at the time and for four years of my childhood my family was stationed at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. During that time my parents chose to live off-base in a small German neighborhood and my mother would take me to the local bakery everyday after kindergarten. At six years old, I remember being nervous and unsure at first but was eventually placing our orders in German on my own. As a child, I needed reinforcement and confidence to speak another language, which I believe holds true at any age. My family moved back to the United States two years later and the only German I remember today is “acht weis brotien bitte” translated, “may I have eight white rolls please.”

It was almost ten years later when I would have my next experience as a language learner, this time in my freshman year of high school. I had a variety of teachers during four years of Spanish levels one through four; each had their own “unique” and entertaining qualities. The most common feeling though, was that my classmates and I didn’t think we were learning anything at the time. We focused mostly on grammar, straight from the text, and some days we would get to watch a Spanish soap opera but that was just a break from boring lectures and book exercises. My own past classroom experience has taught me the necessity of providing a variety of activities for covering material in order to keep the student’s attention and interest.

In order to fulfill the language requirement in college, I enrolled in the second part of an introductory Spanish class for review. From day one, my professor spoke nothing but Spanish to us during class. Quite a change from high school! While it was intimidating and challenging at first, I started to get used to it. We knew from the beginning of the semester not to rely on English during class, so we never became accustomed to that crutch. Because it was uncomfortable at first, the general reaction about this professor was negative. She was "too hard, strict, overboard, serious" - you name it, she was called it. I agreed that it was a difficult introductory course, but I thought she was a great teacher. I respected her for not letting all of us sail through the basics. While strict in her no-English rules, she was also very patient with everyone. She handled the variety of skill levels very well and was positive with everyone. I eventually signed up for more of her classes throughout my college years and she became one of my favorite and most challenging professors in my four years there. The passion that she showed everyday in the classroom made her an effective teacher semester after semester. Her passion had sparked us all as students; we now had more confidence in our language skills because she was constantly encouraging us to practice aloud in class (and in Spanish) at all times. After the semester, it was easy to look back and appreciate the challenge because of the effective results her methods produced.

Graduation from college began my three year hiatus from the language. Instead of continuing with my Spanish, I started working for an accounting firm where my only exposure to the language was an occasional lease agreement that I was asked to translate at work. It took me a while to realize that lease agreements in English are next to impossible to understand, and now I had to read a language I hadn’t practiced in several years. There went my confidence in Spanish!

This past February I quit my accounting job and enjoyed my most recent language learning experience while living in Barcelona, Spain for five weeks. It was so interesting to learn about the language priorities of the population there. The order of importance for the majority population in Barcelona is to speak Catalan first, then English, and then Spanish. What I found most often was a surprising number of people that speak all three languages in addition to others! I’m convinced that once a person acquires a second language, it becomes easier each time an additional language is attempted. As much as possible, I tried to use the little Spanish I remembered and slowly it came back to me. After only 5 weeks abroad, I felt more and more comfortable; successfully getting through restaurants, the pharmacy, the post office, etc. I believe that a great tool for practicing a second language is the opportunity for immersion. I traveled to Spain thinking that I could read and understand the language well but once I got there I had a hard time adjusting to the variety of accents and speed at which people were speaking. During my time in Spain, I thought speaking aloud was intimidating at first, but much like my college Spanish classes, the more I did it, the more confidence I gained to do it again.

Clearly, I still have a long way to go before being able to say that I am “fluent” in Spanish, even though I have been studying it for a while now. The on-again, off-again learning has not proven to be successful for me and that is another experience I will take with me into the classroom. My future ESOL students will need just as much practice with their second language as I do with mine.

Reflection on Self as a Language Learner

Having grown up in Reading, Pennsylvania, which is near Lancaster in the heart of Pennsylvania “Dutch” (that is, Deutsch or German) Country, I was required to study German starting in seventh grade, continuing with the same teacher through my senior year.

Frau Braun taught us through a combination of methods. Given the era in which she was teaching, the audiolingual method was predominant in her class. I still often find myself thinking, “Mann kann den larm ja shon von der strasse aushoren,” or “One can hear the noise all the way from the street.” Needless to say, I have found that extremely useful over the years.

She also brought various other methods into her class, including grammar-translation and communicative techniques. We used oral repetition, studied the rules of grammar, and translated texts, but she also required us to bring new articles to class and report on them to the class. We also discussed everyday issues such as the success of the school sports teams. By senior year I was reading Goethe in the original and could carry on a decent conversation.

I went to Germany alone for a few weeks in my early twenties and knew German well enough to travel around the country, book hotels, order food in restaurants, shop, and have casual talks. I loved being able to use my knowledge of German in a real-life situation, although I was surprised at not being able to speak and understand more successfully given my relatively advanced reading ability. Working with ESOL students, I now understand that it is typical for some students (in my class, some Korean students) to be much better at reading and writing than they are at speaking as a result of the type of schooling they have had.