TEFL Anderson Alabama

I have always been a proponent of multilingualism. Both of my parents speak fluent spanish and english, as well as basic speech in several other languages. I was raised around spanish, but my parents never made a decision to speak enough to their children to raise them bilingually. When I was an adolescent, and then an adult, I attempted to learn both spanish and french with varying degrees of success and I wondered how the language learning process could have been easier for me. A common simple solution to which I often escaped in my musings was, "If only I had been taught a second language at a very early age". I had often heard that studies had always proven learning a second language to be most successful at a young age, and I had even heard that it is practically impossible to become truly fluent in a language if one begins learning the language too late in life ! When offered a position to teach english in South Korea to 3 year olds, I though I would finally get the chance to observe the "right" way to learn a second language-though immersion at a very young age. I thought that by learning in this way, the children would become fluent in the second language quickly and fairly effortlessly. After 6 months teaching, I have come to a different conclusion. While certain children I teach will become fluent, or quite close, after several years in an immersion type program, other children I doubt will ever speak english flawlessly, or even close. When learning our first language, as an infant, it's clear that everyone almost without exception becomes fluent in their first language. My previous assumption was that this was due to the age at which the language was learned. However, after teaching very young learners (3 years old) in an immersion english program for 6 months, my assessment has changed. The most surprising thing that I have noticed in my classroom has been the development of students who are more talented in english and students who are less so. This confused me, given previously I assumed that by simply being around the language a certain amount everyone would absorb it at approximately the same rate (as is the case with first language acquisition). In my small class of 10, where every single child started at the same level in english, I am now dealing with several children who can communicate quite effectively in english, and several children who can barely get a simple sentence out. Not only that (I would say that dictates vocabulary and phrases learned), but in terms of pronunciation, there are certain children who can reproduce english sounds when I make them, and certain children who, no matter how many times we practice, simple cannot. This was contrary to my previous assumption that learning a second language at a young age is similar to learning your first language. Yet in one's first language, there is hardly ever a case where a speaker cannot properly make the sounds or pronounce the words. Another possibly hypothesis about why this is happening is that these children are just starting to learn english and as they are immersed in the language for longer and longer periods of time (years), they will improve to the level of a native speaker. However, during these past 6 months, I have also taught supplementary english classes to Elementary school aged children who have been in an immersion english program for 4-8 years and my experience with them has confirmed my experience with my 3 year old students. In my older classes, like my youngest class, there are certain students who seem to be gifted with languages, and can speak, write, and understand english quite well. And, also like my youngest class, in my older classes there are students who continually struggle with the language-with speaking, writing, and comprehension. Even after years of immersion schooling in english, it seems these students will never be able to conduct themselves in english like a native speaker, or even close to one. It has been of much interest to me to observe that even with these children learning their second language at a very young age, the learning process of that second language is very different than the process for their first language. It seems that unlike the first language learning, where everyone eventually reaches the same level of fluency, with a second language there will emerge students who are more giften with learning languages who will approach fluency, and students who are less gifted will find it much more difficult, if not impossible to achieve fluency.