The experience of English learning

The ideal L2 self, the ought-to L2 self and the L2 learning experience are the factors of motivation of SLA (DÖRNYEI, Z,1994). I believed that many factors affect motivation. And motivation is different in different situations. My parents were very focused on early education. Normally, in China, students start to learn English in the third grade in public school. My parents signed me up for additional courses to learn English when I was in first grade. My additional class helped my English to a certain extent, although at the time I didn't understand why I had to learn and what was the use of what I had learned. I remembered that in my extra class, the teacher arranged a lot of games and activities, and the children were very interested and engaged. Even though we didn’t learn many concepts of English, we thought those games were very interesting. That was implicit teaching. I am sure that it's very effective to little kids. In the third grade, the school started to teach English classes. Then, I stood out and I could get high English grades. When I was in the first and second grades, I had low self-confidence because of my poor math grades. When English was added to the main subject, something was changed. I tried to learn English in order to keep my high grade, it was a positive cycle. At that time, I probably didn't realize my interest in English. Because at that time, English was my chance to get a high grade for me.

In junior high school, due to the increase of subjects, my English grades became less prominent, and I started to focus on other subjects. Because the exam requires a higher total score than a single subject score in English. At that time, I found that motivation changed with the external environment.

When I was in high school, I entered a boarding school. The English teachers mainly used PPP methods and exam-based teaching methods, which made me have a lot of pressure to learn English. According to the affective filtering hypothesis, subconscious affective factors affect learners' acquisition of language, explaining how affective factors affect the process of foreign language learning, and anxiety will affect the input of a second language (Krashen, 1982). At that time, I have less motivation in English.

After entering the university, although I am not an English major, there are also many English-related activities, such as speech contests, English competitions, etc. I learned English with a relaxed mind and I got good grades.

During my junior year, I had the opportunity to study in Europe as an exchange student, and that was the first time I used a language I've learned for over ten years in a real context. I learned more about the culture of the language than the boring grammar I learned in the classroom in high school. When I communicate with other people in English, I use English to spread Chinese culture to foreigners. I feel proud.

In my fourth year of college, I discovered my strong interest in English, and I also hope to create a more interesting English classroom through my ability to make students more motivated to learn English. In language teaching, both form teaching and meaning teaching are very important, as well as explicit teaching and implicit teaching (Ellis, 2015). In the future, I look forward to applying my English teaching knowledge to Chinese classrooms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reference:

DÖRNYEI, Z. (1994). Motivation and Motivating in the Foreign Language Classroom. The Modern Language Journal, 78(3), 273–284. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.1994.tb02042.x

Ellis, R. (2015). Understanding Second Language Acquisition: Second Edition (Oxford Applied Linguistics) (2nd Revised ed.). Oxford University Press. 

Krashen, S. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition.