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I have been through the experience of learning a foreign language overseas, twice in my life, once as a child and once as a middle-aged adult. These two language learning experiences were vastly different and have allowed me to view language learning from two different points of view as well as giving me a variety of ideas that can be arranged to fit multiple teaching formats. As a child, a majority of my foreign language learning was done through conversations and instruction with my parents as well as through playing games with local children. Through this experience, I have seen the value of games and play in the language learning process, especially for children, but also for adults. The format of doing something physically active while learning, seems to solidify the word or concept into our minds. For instance, if we take a ball and bounce it back and forth between two people and say the word “ball” in the language being learned, every time we bounce it, this will solidify the word in our minds more effectively than by just looking at a picture of a ball and drilling the word “ball” over and over. As an adult, language learning was much more difficult. While living overseas, I was a student in a language school for nine months, then I was taught by two different tutors, for about a year each. The teaching style of the language school was very rigid and did not allow for flexibility in the workbook schedule to allow time to address issue areas. The first tutor did well at only speaking the language being learned during lessons, but focused a bit too much on reading and less on the conversational portion of the language, which made communication out in the local community more difficult. The second language tutor had some experience learning a second language in a foreign country, so she spent a large majority of the lesson time focused on building conversational vocabulary and teaching me proper sentence structure. She had great ideas from her own experience, like having me put tags on various items around my house with the names of those items on it, in the language I was learning. These ideas helped me have a great leap forward in language learning, while she was tutoring me. So as a teacher of the English language, I can draw from these experiences to create a variety of activities that will help my students learn English efficiently and effectively. I would use a very hands on method, with both children and adults, as often as possible. I would also make sure not to be too rigid in following the workbook schedule, but rather to keep in mind, my goal is for my students to effectively speak English, not to get through the workbook in a certain timeframe. I would make sure when I am planning my English class I build in time for going over issue areas so that the students walk away with a complete understanding of the material. So in conclusion, the many things I have taken away from my own experience of learning a foreign language will significantly enhance, not only my ability to effectively teach English, but also my ability to empathize with my students and understand the difficulties they are going through as they learn a new language. These language learning experiences will help me use the teaching materials effectively, while also employing creativity in the classes to produce effective and competent English speakers.
