TXGB6105 LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 1

Autobiographic Essay

1.0 Introduction

My choice to become a teacher was not made lightly. This decision was a result of a
process of reflection about what I wanted to do with my life. I have chosen a career in
education because I believe that it is one of the most important functions performed in our
culture. I believe that teachers individually and collectively have the ability to not only
change the world but to show a progression. Within the process of teaching, I hope to find
both personal and professional renewal within my own self. I want to be a part of a noble
profession with the hope of one day being counted among those in whom future teachers find
inspiration. Many of the great teachers that I have had throughout my education have become
my heroes and role models. I began to understand in secondary school and university that
great teachers have skills that I wanted to learn. Therefore, I want to follow their examples.

Besides, I always told myself that great teachers were good at explaining content,
were patient yet firm with students, were always fair, set high expectations, knew how to
motivate, and used humour appropriately during the lessons. They were also great
communicators who had a command of their subject matter content. This is the type of
teacher that I always intend to become. However, I understand that my personal teaching
style towards my students will evolve as I draw on my own strengths, knowledge, skills,
values, and experiences. Hence, this essay will mainly discuss my very own language
learning history and teaching experiences which can be highly reflected to the concepts and
issues that I have learnt in the Language Acquisition course for my Master’s Degree.

2.0 Language Learning History

Firstly, we all have a story behind and this is truly unquestionable. Personally, I have
little doubt that my family and life experiences have most definitely conditioned who I am
and what I am currently dedicating my life to my career of teaching. Whenever I look back to
my past, my memories of childhood and other periods of my life reveal a linguistic part of me
which has always been latent. Though it is true I can only recall some scattered events or
situations which took place at specific times, these minor details illustrate aspects related to
the acquisition of my mother tongue, Tamil, or my first contacts or attempts to learn foreign
languages like the Malay Language and the universal language, English. Hence, I will try to
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give an accurate narration of those recollections which I believe may have influenced my
teaching profile as it is now.

My very first memory of learning a language had to do with language awareness and
was related to one specific event when I was around the age of 4 or 5. I could feel that the
people surrounding me spoke in various languages and had different accents on a particular
language. I remember having trouble with the pronunciation of the sounds “s” and “z”. My
very first contact with the English language came through my parents. I must have been about
6 years old at that time. My parents who had learnt English in their childhood made an
attempt to teach it to my sister and I using story books at that time. I particularly remember
my mother trying to make me repeat the words like “vegetable”, “strawberry” and
“mushroom”. My second direct contact with the learning of a language turned up just by
chance. This was when my father received an immediate transfer letter regarding his job and
he was finally forced to accept a position in Penang where we all moved.

By mid-January in 2000 we started our new life in the small island, Penang. I was
placed in a missionary school known as Saint George’s Girls’ School of Penang. At the onset
the experience was quite hard but eventually turned out rewarding with regard to my learning
of the language. Although I felt lost and frequently panicked, I also realized I could infer the
meaning of many terms and this fact gave me great confidence. It took me about a month to
understand and follow everyday conversations with my friends in the school. I must really
have learnt to express myself fairly fast to the point of being categorized as talkative as the
school reports from that time show. It was an enriching experience to be studying in a school
consisted of multi-racial students which offered me the possibility of learning both the
foreign languages like Malay and English which eventually opened my eyes to a totally
different culture from the one I had experienced until then.

3.0 Language Teaching History

Next, my experience can be directly related to the significant aspect discussed in the
article entitled ‘Sociocultural Perspectives on Language Development by Sonia Nieto in
which she has successfully included her own background in education by relating to the
needs of students who are diversified in terms of their language proficiency background
which includes the socio-cultural and socio-political aspects. In her article, she has offered
some useful and meaningful insights and evidence on how teachers can teach their students
who are mostly originated from different cultural values, racial and even to the extent of their
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linguistics backgrounds. Based on my experience learning foreign languages from different

cultural background, it has become an essential for teachers to provide a teaching
methodology which caters to the different needs of students. According to Hutchinson
(2011), he stated in his article that some students are very knowledgeable about their ethnic
and cultural heritage, while others fail to see how behaviours, attitudes and beliefs reflect
their own cultures. In his opinion, to enhance students learning about their cultures, teachers
should select materials that can help students to learn how to cope with their own cultural
identity confusion by reading about characters facing similar issues.

Next, I have been exposed to many theories of language teaching which will be useful
in dealing with students in term of their diversified background and abilities. Ginsberg (2005)
affirms that the diversity of learners in a classroom suggests that a meaningful examination of
teachers’ beliefs and perspectives is fundamental. The distinction between different beliefs
and assumption of students’ abilities and disabilities underpins differences in the attributions
that teachers and parents make about children’s learning. In agreement with Ginsberg, Pratt
(2005) also explains that teachers' beliefs are not limited to their personal ones, but also exist
on global level. Therefore, after studying and becoming familiar with all the theories behind
Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Category, the results I can gather from the test show that I
am a mixture of a linguistic-visual type of learner. Hence, my teaching ways would comply
with the mastery and understanding styles as there are characteristics of these two reflected in
both my learning and teaching.

Furthermore, I believe I have gradually attempted to include all kinds of learners in

my lessons since. Interestingly enough, when I analyze the type of materials I prepare, there
is a clear predominance of activities that are related to visualization, many tasks that include
phonetics like work on sounds, stress and rhythm. At the same time, I have been trying to
implement exercises where the students can manipulate things such as work with pictures,
cuttings, paper strips, hand outs with questionnaires they fill in mingling and interviewing
their classmates, computer-based lessons, the use of PowerPoint slides, DVDs and others. In
order for me to suit my students’ different needs, I try hard to make use of diagrams,
graphics, pictures, problem-solving, and logic games, whenever suitable or relevant to clarify
aspects or to better structure concepts. Along my teaching career I have also modified aspects
like breaking my tendency to give an overall idea of the concepts to be taught instead, I try to
insert approaches which first concentrate in details to later provide the whole picture which I
believe is relevant to the 21st century learning skills. This is much relevant to
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the input hypothesis proposed by Stephen Krashen in his Second Language Acquisition
Theory in which he attempts to explain how the learner acquires a second language.
According to this hypothesis, the learner improves and progresses when he receives second
language 'input' that is one step beyond his current stage of linguistic competence. For
instance, if my student is at a stage 'i', then acquisition takes place when he is exposed to
'Comprehensible Input' that belongs to level 'i + 1'.

Apart from that, my teaching belief is that all and every single one of our students
should be our concern regardless of their background. Previously, I had a worry to engage
one of my students who seem lost as well as who switch off or who deliberately try to boycott
my lessons. Though there may be a reason for this behaviour, the question is that we teachers
do not always have the time to find the causes. I strongly believe that the student’s previous
experience as learner has left an indelible mark which negatively determined his attitude
towards the subject. One of the good examples would be his frequent mistakes in the
homework as well as during classroom discussion. This had left an impression in me stating
that this particular student didn’t put any efforts in his studies due to his lack of interest
towards the subject. However, i realized that he had a bad experience with his previous
language teacher in which it has left an impact on him till now. According to Mody (2001) in
his article entitled ‘A Little Dirt Never Hurt Anyone’, he briefly discussed his views about
the different notions of ‘dirt’ in his point of view of material science. This has given me an
insight to have an in depth review in terms of language learning mechanism in terms of
identifying errors and mistakes. Just the right amount of ‘dirt’ as mentioned in the article can
mark a piece of knowledge as the real thing; not enough that is, findings which are ‘too clean’
can indicate error or deception.

In addition to that, correcting students’ errors is substantial in a number of ways as it

tells the teacher about the progress of the student, and therefore what remains to be learnt.
Second, they also supply evidence of how a language is acquired and what strategies the
student employs in learning a language. Thirdly, they are indisputable to the learning process
because making errors is regarded as a device the student uses in order to show his
dissatisfaction of his previous experiences in a different context. In order for me to attempt to
this matter, it requires not only a good teaching practice but in setting good examples and
efforts to integrate them and other considerations. In fact, it needs my very own psychology
and a lot of dedication and that extra time to cater to the student’s needs in the classroom.
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Next, the coming of immigrant students into our educational community is another
important issue to reflect upon. I would classify them as special because their circumstances
are also special in which their attitude often shows that the English class terrifies them
especially when they compare themselves with the other students and are aware of their lower
level. This is because, most of them have not been schooled back in their country, for
example two of my students who are originated from Thailand and Indonesia. It has been one
of the toughest areas for me to help them in overcoming their inferiority complex with other
students is when I often face language barrier complications whenever I try to communicate
with them. Therefore, I believe that by showing that I care for them and offering them extra
support to help them “get there” can be the key to their success. One of my keys is by
motivating my students. It may sound easy but it is terribly complicated. In my opinion, I
believe that many of my students experience the classroom as a setting where they will not
discover anything new except on the existence of the computers, LCD’s, internet and
televisions which have already anticipated much of the information we teachers are supposed
to discover to them.

In addition to that has been discussed above, there are no ideal classes though this
would be all teachers’ dreams as we all wish they existed. Hence, one of the ideas that I
usually undertake in my lessons to encourage the students usually takes place before starting
any new unit or topic. I spend some time analysing the contents as this helps me to look for
entertaining activities which could complement the ones in the text book. For instance,
whenever I intend to do some exciting teaching and learning activities, I announce it at the
beginning of the lesson. This is in itself motivating and rewarding as the students will often
do their best to work hard during the lesson to have enough time to get to the exciting
activities part. Besides, another thing that really works for me to motivate my students is to
offer the students a wide range of possibilities to raise their marks along the evaluation. I look
for tasks they can prepare themselves related to the unit of study and plan with them what
they will do, how, when and whether it will be done in groups or individually. I also praise
their work whenever I see they have made an effort. Hence, I have greatly adapted my
teaching style in a way it provides them a sense of responsibility and ethical values by
helping them to become reflective human-beings.
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4.0 Conclusion

In a nutshell, I would like to insist on the fact that we are working with youngsters
who are solely dependable on teachers’ guidance and adequate models to follow. Therefore,
we should provide all that for them and much more. With regard to the teachers I had, it is
evident that those we best recall are those who took the time to praise us at some point, had
faith in our possibilities and encouraged us by showing their care and affection. However,
one obvious difference between my times as a student and the present is that we were not
taken into account in the way the students are today. If I am to compare the role of teachers in
society with those of the teachers thirty or forty years ago, I believe that we are in a vast
difference. Hence, I believe that improvement can be better made by establishing stronger
links and having a permanent debate on the course of education. Teachers should all row in
the same direction to obtain the levels of quality and success we all wish for.
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References

Ginsberg, M. B. (2005). Cultural diversity, motivation, and differentiation. Theory In

Practice, 44(3), 218-255.

Hutchinson, N. L. (2011). Inclusion of exceptional learners in Canadian school: A practical

Handbook for Teachers. (3th ed.).Pearson: Toronto.

Mody, C. C. (2001). A little dirt never hurt anyone: Knowledge-making and contamination in

materials science. Social Studies of Science, 31(1), 7-36.

Pratt, D. D. (2005). Five perspectives on teaching in adult and higher education. Krieger

Publishing Company. Malabar: Florida