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To begin with, I would like to state why I chose this topic. As for a non-native English speaker, I came through experience of learning English language as a foreign language, which has some slight similarities with my native language, but still many things in English seemed to be confusing for me when I was a kid learning it. After gaining some knowledge of it to be able to speak more or less fluently, I have also experienced teaching English to my fellow citizens first and to Chinese students after that. Since I know what my native language compared to English is and I have also gained some knowledge of Chinese language, it was easier for me to get the idea of how it is like to study English for different nations and cultures. That is why I find this topic rather interesting. In my understanding, a foreign language is a language, which normally is not spoken in our surrounding area and it can be considered as a language of strangers from other areas. I find quite important to know English language, because nowadays in the age of globalization it is difficult not to come across English-speaking communities or the English culture. The proficiency in English is a significant option especially when travelling abroad. You can not rely on a migration service officer or hotel staff to know your native language, even if it is very popular in many countries! Unfortunately, technological progress has not gained its perfection as we still can see how translation software often fails to translate some information properly. From my experience of learning English and Chinese, I must admit that in case of a European person, even if his or her language comes from a different European language family, it is still much easier for him or her to obtain fluency in English compared to a Far East Asian person, whose vocabulary, writing and speaking systems are completely different from any European language. Also, when teaching English as a foreign language, I had to deal with students of different attention span and different levels of language comprehension. From the very beginning of my English teaching experience, I was often confused about why it took so much time for some students of the same age as I was to memorize some words, while it was so easy for me to memorize some words just almost at once. That was the case of dealing with students who had no talent to languages at all, but to something another. Thus, all I had to do is just to rely on my patience of a Saint and to keep on doing my job, just more time was needed to be spent to achieve some result. However, more difficulties appeared when I started to deal with Chinese students, especially younger ones. I had to experience the fact that kids have shorter attention span, so there was not only just more patience and time needed to be spent, but also much more playful and various ways to teach and practice English. Another thing was that Chinese students have less vocabulary in common with English (I would even say almost nothing common at all!) compared to my language having about 15-20% vocabulary in common with it. In addition, the writing and speaking system of Chinese and English are quite different too (e.g. having alphabet vs having characters). That is why I found rather challenging to teach Chinese students. Nevertheless, there was some result achieved by my students, as I always had to correct and improve my teaching style often being assisted by my management or colleagues. In conclusion, I would like to admit that when learning a foreign language, no matter if you have relevant talents or your native language has no similarities with the selected foreign language at all, there always will be some result, if you have enough patience, motivation and desire. As for being a teacher of foreign languages, the above-mentioned aspects are not enough, because, apart from them, having teaching skills and experience are also required. In this case, thanks to different helpful sources as this course, there will always be an opportunity to acquire knowledge and to gain confidence about how to teach a foreign language more effectively and professionally.
