ESL Teacher Reflection 3

In both my LLT 346 class and this class we discussed modal verbs and how they are not found in every language.  In my LLT 346 class we also talked about how articles were not used in every language or were used differently than in English.  I never realized this and it made me think how those two things could make learning English very difficult.  One of my best friends was adopted from Russia and moved here when she was 14 and started 7^th grade knowing no English.  We’ve been friends for four years now and I’ve never asked her about her experiences learning English, but my LLT classes made me interested in this and I talked to her about when I was home last weekend.  I knew becoming fluent in English was very difficult especially at that age, but I was surprised when she told me that even after eight years in the United States she is still learning more everyday.  She said she came here with a few friends and one was a couple years younger than her so she picked up the language much faster than the rest of them because of her age.  For my friend, she said the best way she learned was just by hanging out with some girls at school, even though she could not speak English, she just listened to their conversations and would repeat what they would say to help her learn.  At home, she would label everything and just practice repeating words.  She said after you would here it enough times you could catch on.  Thinking of the Chinese immersion school video we watched where some of the students knew no Chinese and were placed in classes taught in all Chinese, I asked her how it was the first days of class when all she knew was Russian and the teachers and everyone around her were speaking English.  She said it was very difficult at first, especially in her English class.  She told me Math was easiest subject to learn because there were English terms to learn, but math is the same everywhere.  For one class a day, she would go to an ESL class where they helped her with English and work from all her classes.  I told her after watching videos and reading about content based learning I thought it would be difficult for learning new material and English at the same time, but she told me it is not as hard as it seems, it actually makes learning English easier because it is being applied in a useful context.  She explained that modals, articles, and the number of words we have to mean the same thing were most difficult for her.  A lot of times when I text her she will forget articles like a and the, but after talking to her and learning how articles are different in every language it made a lot more sense to me.  She said she actually has to think about it and make a conscious effort when writing to include articles, where as they come naturally for native English speakers.  I thought it was funny when she told she didn’t understand how we could have so many words to mean the same thing.  She was like in Russian a dog is a dog.  Here a dog could be dog, puppy, canine, mutt, or pooch; it’s hard to keep up with.  I never realized how many words we have to mean the same thing and how difficult it would be for someone learning English.  It was enlightening to hear about her experiences learning English because she came here as a teenager and could remember very clearly.  It made me notice things about the English language and what makes it difficult to learn that I never saw before and took for granted.