1assignment - Section (A)

Assignment-1: section (A)
No. 1 Describe your own experience of learning a language or languages. What

conclusions can you draw for your own teaching of English?
For me, learning a language is a complex process. It contains lots of exposure and
practices. To share my personal experience, I have been exposed to and learned
English as a second language from the age of five since I had kindergarten class at
school to till now. Starting from kindergarten the frequency of learning rose to
four times a week. My first experience of native speakers was at the age of twelve,
when I went to the beach in summer.
All I remember about the first five years of studying was fun. Learning English did
not have any difficulties until I reached middle school. I did not accept a lot of
biased approaches in my learning experience. The one I can think of was the term
fossilization. (Selinker,1972) stated that “This may be especially for learners whose
exposure to the second language does not include instruction or the kind of
feedback that would help them recognize differences between their
interlanguages and the target language”.
The bias caused by me can be explained in terms of mother tongue interference .
(Richards,1974) mentioned that “A number of studies show that many errors can
be explained better in terms of learners’ developing knowledge of the structure of
the target language rather than an attempt to transfer patterns of their first
language”. Especially, some of the errors are prominent such as the use of a
regular -ed past tense ending on an irregular verb. For example, in simple English
sentences, they use past simple tense when they want to show the situation that
happened in the past, whether subject, past tense (regular or irregular ) and later
object(I bought apples yesterday). But in our mother tongue we don’t have past
tense usage. Therefore, I used the wrong tense (I buyed apples yesterday.) Pit
Corder, the linguist from University of Edinburgh stated that “learners produce
correct sentences, they produce sentences that differ from the target language,
we may assume that these sentences reflect the learners’ current understanding
of the rules and patterns of that language”. ( Corder,1967)
Our English teacher displayed English cartoons, played associated games and role
play with us, taught new words by pronouncing, showing what is meant by the
action without giving a translation into Myanmar, and she used the TPR method.
I think I was very lucky with the second language teachers I had. Most of them
were experts in their subject and teaching skills. I think the qualities of a teacher
have a main influence on motivating, persuading the students to subjects and
giving effective feedback. The teacher’s great effort was conveyed to the subject,
which is really strong for children. I am sure that my current good knowledge of
language is 75% of the merit of my qualified teachers.
After graduating from a state university, I chose to settle as a language teacher. So,
I need to acquire more high-grade skills for my professional choice. Firstly, I joined
an extra English class. Moreover, I studied the most famous English course books
such as “English Grammar in Use” by: Raymond Murphy, Cambridge University
Press. I started to study them by myself and later I tried to teach effectively and
prepared my lesson plan with a fun and happy learning style different from
traditional boring one. I wanted to be an experienced teacher so that improbable
questions would not have been left unanswered in my class.So, I found all related
books existing in the market. “Speakout” by Frances Eales and Steve Oakes,
“Teaching Other Subjects Through English” by Sheelagh Deller & Christine Price,
“Collins English for life Speaking” by Rhona Snelling, “Collins Listening” by Lan
Badger, and hundreds of other skills focused on like “How to Teach English” by
Jeremy Harmer., Longman ELT.
The slogan I like most is “Learning is a lifelong process and the most pressing task
is to teach people how to learn” by Peter Drucker. For this reason, I will never stop
Learning process till the end of my life. 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” (Richard,2006).
When I taught young learners, I chose simply short sentences and instructions. I
have tried to get exposure through books and websites since 2017. The natural
input I got from YouTube , Educational Channel and English movies which I used
for studying by myself and got ideas for my classes. Moreover, I try to expand my
vocabulary and use them in contexts. When I get new words, I come across them
in my dictionary and then apply them in my class. But I have a vocabulary gap in
my knowledge of technical terms, expressions and jargons especially in Science
and Maths to paraphrase them for students to understand.
I think I have mastered the informal and formal styles of pronunciation, grammar
and vocabulary rather than any other parts. I create authentic role play,
conversational dialogue, essay writing discussion for group work and some mini
games (like Apple Pass) that are informal and formal styles of teaching.
Meanwhile, we can rarely apply intimate, casual or frozen styles that can only be
seen in English Text books and literature books.
At first, I was scared to stand in front of students due to the lack of confidence and
my low experiences in teaching. No one is perfect in producing an ideal language
without being affected by memory limitations, disturbance and errors(Module 1
LTTC course book, 2014). For these reasons, I gave myself time to change these
unconscious situations to be accurate and fluent in our learning.
When I become an experienced teacher, I can reduce these challenges. Moreover,
I prepare to get personal development for my career like attending teacher
training, and a diploma for TKT. Now, I can create more effective teaching
learning classes.
References
Corder, S. P. 1967. ‘The significance of learners’ errors’. International Review of
Applied Linguistics.
Module one, (2014). Note to self correcting exercises. TESOL Course, London
Teacher Training College. Tehran Institute of Technology.
Richards, J. 2006. Communicative Language Teaching Today, United States of
America, Cambridge University Press.
Richards, J. 1974. ‘A non-contrastive approach to error analysis’ in J.Richards (ed.).
Error analysis. London: Longman.
Selinker, L. 1972. ‘Interlanguage.’ International Review of Applied Linguistics.
Word Count: 978
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Hsu Lin Mon
Zu Zu Aung

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