Hello, my name is Angel Foster. I am currently a senior at the University of Houston pursuing a degree in teaching and learning 4th through 8th grade math. I will be graduating this upcoming December with a Bachelors of Science in Education. I am very excited to pursue a career as an educator and be able mentor, teach and inspire young people to achieve their full potential through education. In this video, I will discuss my experiences with learning new languages.
After discussing my experiences with learning new languages, I can note that I have experiences many different approaches to teaching a language. When I was learning Spanish, as I stated in the video, I had no intentions to learn Spanish. I learned Spanish subconsciously through experiences and interactions. Krashen argues that the fundamental difference between learning a language and acquiring a language is that language acquisition is subconscious (1998). I have found this to be true because when I was taught Arabic in a formal classroom setting, I unfortunately was not able to acquire the language. I did in fact learn many things about the Arabic language, but not enough to fluently converse and comprehend the language. When learning Arabic, my teacher focused on the language rules, grammar and vocabulary rather than by teaching me to understand complete messages. In the input hypothesis, Krashen mentions that language is acquired by understanding messages, not by consciously learning about the language and not by memorizing grammar rules and vocabulary (1998). When attempting to learn the Vietnamese language, I was not able to comprehend complete messages because the tapes moved very fast and I could not remember what ever word in each sentence meant by the end of each section. When learning new vocabulary is Spanish on the other hand, I normally only asked a friend to tell me the meaning of a word in order to understand a message or dialogue from a peer. I subconsciously became familiar with sentence builders, and was able to find the meaning of any words in between which I did not know in order to comprehend a message.
Wright, Wayne. Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon, 2015. Print. Second Edition.
