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TP 1 - My Language Learning Autobiography First Version

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TP 1 - My Language Learning Autobiography First Version

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Your feedback:
Victoria, beautifully presented!

You need to see yourself as a language learner within the stages of your learning process. You mentioned a chronological narrative but it lacks detail on your language development. Were there any situations besides when your grandmother spoke the L2 that you came across a more informal setting? Internet, movies, trips, etc. Same in the case of your strengths and weaknesses – too broad.

Remember this is the first version – the clean one is for the e-portfolio.

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My Language learning autobiography

in all the institutions i attended, english was taught very similarly. the focus was always on grammar and vocabulary but most of all grammar. I honestly did not mind this because as i mentioned, i have always been passionate about grammar and learning the structures by heart.

i can understand that for most students this was boring but that was not my case.

In secondary school the focus was on international exams and all the grammar and vocabulary that we would need to pass the exam. I think that this allowed me to develop the four macro skills: speaking, listening, writing and reading and focus on the ones that were more challenging for me.

a method that they still use at icei school is to separate students by levels. there are three levels and i believe this allows every student to progress from their own level. if students are mixed, i believe that neither the less advanced ones nor the advanced ones can actually have a challenge that goes along with their current level of the language.

International exams have definitely influenced my love ANd DESIRE TO MASTER the language.

At st. andrews school i sat for trinity college exam when i was in fifth grade. I still remember that my oral presentation was about orangutans and that the examiner had to move the microphone closer to me because as i was nervous, i spoke in a very low volume.

at icei school i sat for many international exams and i would have liked to sit for more. in first year of secondary school i sat for Preliminary english test (pet) from cambridge. Even if i was nervous the day of the exam, i remember being confident and happy to be able to sit for the exam after a year of preparation.

In third year I sat for first certificate exam and I also remember those years of preparation with joy as i really enjoyed the process of learning the necessary structures and vocabulary to reach that b2 level of the language.

After receiving the grade of the first certificate exam i remember the bittersweet feeling i felt. i was glad because i had passed it but as i am very hard on myself and always feel i could have done things better that i do them, i felt disappointed on myself because i wanted to get a better grade. Besides, after receiving that grade i was told i would not be able to sit for the following exam, CAe, i would need an extra year of preparation. that meant that my plans to sit for all cambridge exams in my secondary school years had been destroyed.

But still, i continued to learn more about the language and in june of 2018 i finally sat for cae exam with more fear than ever. With a lot of effort i was able to pass the exam and I felt very proud of myself not only for the grade but mainly because i did not give up on my ambition.

Proficiency exam is still something i want to prepare myself for.

after such a good experience with english at school i decided to study to become an english teacher. This degree combines my two main passions: english and education. as learning english changed how i see myself completely, my wish as a future teacher is to make my students feel they are good enough as they are.

I remember that before going to university i was very scared because i thought it would be too difficult for me. But today i am more than happy with my choice and i feel truly blessed to have the possibility to study something that i love.

all my experiences have shaped me as the person i am today. learning a second language boosted my self-esteem and confidence more than anything has ever done before. As i mentioned previously, english was the first subject i felt i could be good at and that has undoubtedly influenced how i felt for the language and for myself not only as a learner but as a person as a whole.

my path as a language learner is far from being over. i am still very motivated to keep on learning english as well as some other languages that i would love to be fluent in.

My first contact with english

At the age of two i started my formal education at a kindergarten called 'Jardín Platero.' When I was in k3 i had my first english classes where we mainly worked with songs and storytelling. I still remember some of the songs we used to listen to like 'head, shoulders, knees and toes' or 'itsy bitsy spider.' The other contact that I had with the language was when i visited my grandmother, who has two l1s: english and spanish, and when she wanted to talk about 'adult topics' she spoke in english to my mother and of course i did not understand a word of what she said.

When i started primary school my parents decided to send me to a institute 'Greenfields' twice a week instead of me going double shift to school. I did not learn a lot at the institute and so my parents decided not to send me there anymore. and so, i lost contact with the language from third grade until...

As I don't have many vivid memories of myself as a language learner of my l1 I had to ask my parents, mainly my mother what she remembers from those days. She told me that what came out more naturally for me was speaking, since I was two years old I have spoken 'very clearly.' So it can be said that my strongest skill was speaking. My mother told me a funny story of when I was about two years old and I was with her in the car and she had to brake all of a sudden and I told her 'Mamá concentrate.' She said she couldn't stop laughing and she couldn't believe I was scolding her for the way she had braked at such a young age.

These are my classmates and I in the year 2015

after two years and a half, i changed schools again and i started attending 'colegio icei.' again, i believe extrinsic motivation was there for me. When i started secondary school, teachers always compared me to my older sister who was an 'a' student. I felt horrible with all the comparisons and the 'you should be more like her' comments. However, in English classes i felt i could be myself without any comparison to anyone. I truly enjoyed english classes and i participated a lot more than in any other subject.
That is me with my parents at a dramatization at St. Andrew's school in fifth grade.
when i finished fourth grade my parents decided that i would change school and they wanted me to go to 'st. andrew's college.' The only problem was that at this school they had a very high level of english and I hadn't had english classes for two years. I had to sit for an exam to evaluate my level and from there, there were three options: one was that i would not be admitted if i did not pass the exam, the second one was that if i got the minimum grade to pass the exam i would have to attend levelling classes instead of having classes with my future classmates and the last one and least probably was that if i passed the exam with a good mark i would directly attend classes with my classmates.

So, My parents hired a teacher so that she could help me reach at least the minimum level. this teacher changed the perception i had of myself of a learner not only of a language but of everything. this teacher, miss alicia, encouraged me to study and she believed i could reach the level, and i believe that made all the difference. she even made me believe in myself and i was very motivated to learn.

A month after i met miss alicia i sat for the exam and i got such a good result that i attended classes with my classmates that had been having english classes since kindergarten.

at the end of the year in the end of the year ceremony i received a mention for my effort. I WOULD SAY THAT WAS THE FIRST TIME I FELT PROUD OF MYSELF AND THAT I FELT I COULD BE GOOD AT SOMETHING.

my strengths and weaknesses

I can relate my main strength in english with what was my strength while learning my l1. As i mentioned, speaking came effortlessly to me in spanish from a very young age. In english i would say my strongest skill has always been speaking.

Another strength has been my hunger for knowledge, I have always wanted to be challenged and to make the best out of every class to learn as much as possible.

Grammar has been something that has always called my attention a lot. At school i remember how happy i was every time we learned a new structure or tense. I love grammar and i remember my classmates always being bored with mechanical grammar exercises and for me they were embarrassingly fun. I am sure that my love for the language and specifically grammar have made my learning process a lot easier.

In terms of weaknesses i would say my biggest drawback has always been my fear of making mistakes. I have always been afraid of saying something wrong or inappropriate because of how others will react. grammatically speaking, prepositions have been quite challenging. I have tried to memorize them but i still find that topic difficult to be honest.

In terms of macro skills, the reading skill was very challenging because I found it difficult to concentrate and distinguish what was important from insignificant details.

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My Language learning autobiography in all the institutions i attended, english was taught very similarly. the focus was always on grammar and vocabulary but most of all grammar. I honestly did not mind this because as i mentioned, i have always been passionate about grammar and learning the structures by heart.

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TP 1 - My Language Learning Autobiography Second Version 

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TP 1 - My Language Learning Autobiography Second Version 

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Re: Prepositions

de Juan Pablo Capdevila - Tuesday, 13 de September de 2022, 11:38

I totally agree with you, Victoria. I had the same issue with prepositions, particularly with those prepositions that are used in a different way in our mother tongue. And as you said, recasts are probably the best way of helping students out.

Re: Prepositions

de Ana Claudia Flores Ruano - Tuesday, 13 de September de 2022, 14:40

Hi, Vicky!
Prepositions have also been a complicated topic for me. Sometimes, even today, I find it very helpful to use a collocation dictionary when writing a report or essay. I think that recast is a very useful strategy when teaching collocations in class, as it is important that they are used in the right way, especially when students are referring to the time, place, and location of things.

Re: Prepositions

de Maria Sarmiento - Tuesday, 13 de September de 2022, 20:27

Hi, Vicky! I also had some problems with prepositions, and I agree with you that recasts are a good way to correct them. There are so many prepositions and so, if students were given the option of correcting ourselves by choosing another preposition, I think they would just try out all the prepositions they know until they get the correct one. However, if the teacher smoothly corrects us it is easier to understand why that one and not another, and maybe asking the teacher that.

de Martina Belén Giménez - Tuesday, 13 de September de 2022, 21:38

Hi Vicky!! I think prepositions are probably one of the hardest topics in the English language! They are so difficult to learn and apply that the only way to understand them is to practice on and on an on till you get them just right.

Re: Prepositions

de Belén Hernandez - Tuesday, 13 de September de 2022, 22:49

I feel identify with all of you! As an L2 learner, the most common mistake I made was the use of prepositions. Some years ago, a teacher told me that I should have learned prepositions by heart. Whenever I made a mistake or error related to that topic, the teacher interrupted me by providing me with the correct preposition. I consider this is not positive feedback since my ideas were interrupted, and I could not work on fluency. Besides, I got nervous, so I could not remember the correction, and as a consequence, I repeated the same mistakes.

Re: Prepositions

de Cecilia Pustavrh - Wednesday, 14 de September de 2022, 20:09

Best example ever Victoria!
It is one of the most demanding and challenging aspects of English.
Great comments as well from your classmates.

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Aptitude 2

The assumption that there is a talent which is specific to language learning. The following four components were proposed by Carroll ( 1965 ) as underlying this talent, and they constitute the bases for most aptitude tests:
• Phonemic coding ability
• Inductive language learning ability
• Grammatical sensitivity
• Associative memory capacity
Source: Saville-Troike: Introducing Second Language Acquisition, Chapter 4.

Foreign Language

It is one not widely used in the learners' immediate social context which might be used for future travel or other cross-cultural communication situations, or studied as a curricular requirement or elective in school, but with no immediate or necessary practical application.
Source: chapter 1 from Introducing Second Language Acquisition by Muriel Saville-Troike.

Learning

According to Krashen's Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis, learning is a conscious process in which the learner studies the rules and grammatical structures of the language.
Source: class notes

Library Language

It is one which functions primarily as a tool for further learning through reading, especially when books or journals in a desired field of study are not commonly published in the learners' native tongue.
Source: chapter 1 from Introducing Second Language Acquisition by Muriel Saville-Troike.

Target Language
Any language that is the aim or goal of learning.
Source: chapter 1 from Introducing Second Language Acquisition by Muriel Saville-Troike.

Zone of Proximal Development 2
The zone of proximal development refers to the difference between what a learner can do without help and what they can achieve with guidance and encouragement from a skilled partner.
Source: class notes

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https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1-FCOnRourNwIxnoPOfM8yHQ-bD3y3QKRGrpqvOCvVwk/edit?usp=sharing