English as a Second Language past memories

As for my experience in learning English, just as it is hard to lose weight, learning a language was very difficult for me too. Recalling my experiences in learning English as my second language, I can say that it has never been that easy for me especially that I spent my childhood years in the very same environment where my father and his siblings used to live and grow-up. There was no access to electricity and so television was a very unpopular possession of every household. The poverty of the time and place did not allow us to own even a black-and-white TV to give us at least a glimpse of English language through any TV shows like those in home or otherwise; nor did other media find their ways to our isolated place.

On recollection of these experiences, I realized that radio listening experience must be considered adherent to my archives of frustrations because the station seldom played English songs which I consider as one of the precursor in the acquisition of second language among children in the mountain villages. What prevailed in the late ‘90’s were just some few songs whose meanings were so difficult to comprehend. As a result I just considered them as the sounds of other unknown animals, ghosts and fairies, because I was taught broken English at home at a young age and at school in the later years. In fact, I never knew that the language existed until I reached the second level in grade school when we relocated in the city.

I can still remember our situation in that classroom in my first grade school, a Primary School. There were two levels occupying the same room handled by the same teacher who would swap his time between four classes. Once his grade one students were already given an activity, he would then turn to his grade two students. Our classes usually ended up to Thursday mornings only because our teacher would go to his countryside home.

At home, my father usually spoke English to us, often a translation of the native terms assigned to things that are found at home and in the rustic environment such as spoon, plate, fire, match, chicken, rooster, cow, beans, farm, corn, and sister among others.
I can still recall how I loved to pick- up cuddly chicks while they were walking around the yard which was the very reason why I always ended up crying as the mother hen gets agitated and attacked me as if I was a leopard cat in her coop. Thanks to that experience and I was able to learn a new term which was “angry”. The hen was angry!

Basically, I was able to learn speaking my second language through imitation and habit formation (behaviorism approach) on the English words that I’ve heard from the people around me and practicing them until I was able to identify the objects by myself. Like for instance, my older sister would point at the buzzing insect and would say that it was a “bee” instead of the usual bumblebee and I would imitate the word, repeating it thereafter until I was able to name it the next time it occurs in my sight. Each day, new words were taught by the older family members which for me were a very good foundation prior to my acquisition of the second language. I remember how I was in awe as my first teachers at home spoke English to me, but just lately I realized that they were ungrammatical in doing most of the language teachings. Good thing I was not able to fossilized those errors and suffer the consequences thereafter.

As I moved here in the city, I experienced one of the most frustrating circumstances of living in the far away countryside because things turned out to be very unusual and arcane. I realized that I could not even spell out words correctly and when I take down notes, I was the last pupil to go out of the classroom because I did not copy the sentences by words or phrases. Instead, I wrote every word by letters as in p-e-n-c-i-l. From that on, I was able to get the idea of being bitter in life at a young age, of stumbling myself in self-pity because of my studing condition. What used to be a top student in the far away countryside became a timid worrywart in a big city.
However, it was a good thing I had very competent teachers who patiently taught me how to do things especially in writing, reading and speaking English.

As I reached college and studied second language acquisition, I found out that there were two approaches applied by people around me—both explicitly and implicitly—that made me changed from being a timid pupil into a person of competence: the behaviorist and interactionist approaches. I believe that when it comes to second language acquisition, the behaviorist approach which employs both language imitation and practice can never be undermined. In addition, having been immersed in an environment where competence in the use of the language is required, the interactionist approach should be given due credit because it did not only provide an authentic practice in using the language, but it also has allowed one to consciously monitor their progress as a learner during interactions. Through constant immersion with the target language, I was able to develop competence in it and it made me of what I am today as a language user and student. In fact, I consider the incidence when I learned English and made progress in the four macro- skills a great linguistic achievement.

In terms of the relationship between culture and language, I also believe that both of them have their respective ability of restricting each other. For instance in my experience, the rural culture that I had during the earlier years of my life was so uneasy, and as a result, it limited my exposure to the language and did not allow me to grow linguistically more especially in English. On the other hand, my limited language awareness and skills hindered me in communicating well when I moved in a different setting with different culture. If these difficulties were not addressed thoroughly by my formal mentors, I would have stayed in a “shy” culture and personality because language is very vital to the existence of a culture that makes up a nation.