TEFL Kimball Michigan

Teaching english as a Foreign Language: The Importance of Completion I was born in the united states of America, and I speak english. I speak english because both of my parents speak english. I speak english because the rest of my family, friends, and neighbors speak it. I speak english because that is what I was surrounded with on a daily basis. I never really had to try to speak another language besides spanish for four years. The way that we are taught in the American public schools is unfortunate—we learn another language usually as a freshman in high school or in 8th grade if a student is interested in that type of language extracurricular activity. By the time a child grows past a certain age, the part of their brain that absorbs the language is no longer seething to gain more. children at a very young age are “good at learning multiple languages simultaneously, and when they reach adulthood, “all reinforced languages hold their own in the brain without interfering with others—unlike later learners who may have trouble remembering a second language when they begin to learn a third” (Sohn). From what I read, countries in Europe teach their children other languages at a young age during the time when their brains are trying to develop their communication skills. It seems to have a greater affect on their language ability and memory. The older someone gets, “it not only becomes tougher to learn new languages, there may even be developmental stages beyond which certain nuances of language simply become inaccessible,” so by the “age of 9 to 12 months, for example, babies begin to lose the ability to distinguish between sounds that are not used in their native language” (Sohn). After reaching “age 4, most people will never gain a truly deep grasp on a second language's morphology, which refers to the rules that govern how words are formed from linguistic units” (Sohn). I was taking spanish for four years, and I still do not have the fluency that I strived for. I studied and received straight As, but it was not good enough. I would have to continually practice and be surrounded by the language in order to retain more information about my communication. By taking the tefl courses provided by ITTT, I have learned why I do what I naturally do. Our generation of schooling skipped grammar because the administrators thought it was a waste of time and that the children would pick up the information anyway—which most of us do, but we still did not know why it was the way we wrote and spoke. This course has given me the formations to be grammatically correct and the rules behind them. I now know what I need to teach children and adults why I write and speak the way I do. For this reason, I consider the tefl program important for any instructors who plan on teaching english as a foreign language. Works Cited Sohn, Emily. "Are Some Brains Better at Learning Languages?" Discovery News. Discovery, 19 Mar. 2012. Web. 23 Sept. 2012. .