Learning English as a foreign language: my hate-love story.
Our learning experience influences our teaching decisions, methodology, and role inside the classroom. here, I made a reflection on my past experiences and how they have influenced my present and future as a language teacher.
My name is Daniela, I am a student of a bachelor's degree in English as a foreign language teaching, and I haven’t had English classes at the university since my English level was validated, here you have my hate-love story of learning English as a foreign language.
It is funny how something that I used to hate so much and made me cry during my childhood is now, what makes me happy.
The first thought that comes to my mind when I think about English is elementary school. I used to study in a military school and all I remember is the teacher saying phrases like repeat after me, be quiet, silent, listen up … I didn't learn anything and I was frustrated, my grades were the worst and I still remember the feeling of displeasure and disappointment that I created towards English Class.
Worried about my grades and thinking about my future, my father decided to enroll me in an English course with my older brother. I wasn’t asked. Once, after school, my father took us to the institute and left us there the whole afternoon, and like this for almost 3 years. I cried and begged during the first month. I didn't want to be there. then, resignation.
Let me explain myself, I was 8 years old, my brother was 15 and he didn’t want me to hang out with him. There was nothing such as a kids' program, I had to work with the same material as everybody else, and I don't think there were more kids because I can't remember them.
so, I was surrounded by older people with different reasons and motivations for learning, different levels, ages and I don’t think they were forced to be there like me.
The classes here were different from schools, though. There were programmable grammar lessons that I used to avoid, and activity lessons like vocabulary, listening, reading, conversation, movie, and song club. Those were my favorites. Teachers used to start each lesson with funny warm-up activities and tried to include everyone. After all, now I can say that it wasn't that bad. And despite my lack of interest and appropriate learning resources, I could learn a bit, and improve my grades at school.
That bit of improvement and understanding made me believe that I was good and I didn’t want to disappoint my father and classmates who believed too. That changed my mindset and at the time I started high school I was one of the best students in English class.
I was proud of myself, but at the same time, afraid that I wasn’t as good as everybody was thinking. I decided to take another English course, I was older and more motivated so I asked my father to sponsor that desire.
My second English course was an amazing experience, not only because I intended to make the most of it, but also because the strategy there was pretty good. 80% of the teachers were foreigners, I remember there were some from South Africa, England, New York, Washington. The material used in the classes was based on short readings about cultural facts of the target language and there were also group activities inside and outside the institute, furthermore of sessions where I could solve my questions.
It was a perfect English course until I realized the native teachers knew no Spanish at all, and they weren’t real teachers.
On one hand, this made me push myself to use the English I knew for communicating with them, it helped me to improve my speaking skill, my pronunciation, and my cultural understanding, on the other hand, it was hard for them to explain to me why my answers were right or wrong due to the fact that they didn’t know English grammar rules. Here, the non-native teachers helped me and explained it to me.
In 2014 I finished high school. I didn’t know what I wanted to study, but I knew I was good at English .‘I want to study Languages’ I thought. and the option available in my city, was to study English and French associate degree in a small institute. And that’s what I did.
In that small institute, I started from the start. And yes, it was super boring. Part of me didn’t want to take these beginner grammar classes but the other part of me thought it was a good idea just in case I could have ‘grammar holes’ in my English understanding. I’m glad I did it, I remembered some stuff I was forgetting, and I also played my first role as an English teacher helping my classmate. Then I did internships in public schools, my first experience in a real context. It was good.
I had two more jobs as a pretty young English teacher. I was 19 years old when I worked for three months in a military school. I was in charge of middle and high school, and also of the eleventh grade. Despite never knowing they were my same-aged, it was really hard to deal with them, but I survived.
Then, I started to work in a new English Institute in the city. Here, I ran into my first institute teachers, and as they already knew me, they gave me the opportunity to work with them. It was awesome, after four months of working with them, they promoted me to the kids’ program coordinator. I was able to do what I would have liked to have when I was a frustrated kid.
Working with them I could improve my grammar a lot since we had access to Oxford resources, but I still felt that something was missing. So, I decided to start my Bachelor’s degree.
After three years and a half of studying EFL Bachelor's degree at the university, I can say that there is always going to be something new to learn about English as a foreign language and its teaching strategies, that each student is a unique case and opportunity to learn from, and finally as the language is always evolving I feel the need to evolve with it.
