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I learned English when I was 5 years old. I like my English teacher's teaching methods. She shared a lot of stories and read many fairy tales for us. 

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I learned English when I was 5 years old. I like my English teacher's teaching methods. She shared a lot of stories and read many fairy tales for us. 

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My learning of the second language started in teacher explaining grammar and comprehension in my first language. I felt this helped with the reading and writing. On the other hand, when I move to the environment of the second language, I did not feel the needs to compose in-depth cognition in this language.

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I originally studied English but not how to use it. So as a teacher, I encourage students to speak and not to be so worried about grammar. I encourage them to use the language

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I have had a recent very successful experience with CLIL in higher public education in Mexico, which has been quite positive both in engaging students in content in the target language and building learning strategies

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I have both positive and negative experiences. In primary grades, my teachers advised my parents not to speak Farsi at home anymore with my brother and I. So we didn't, and our Farsi weakened, but didn't completely leave, because our parents still spoke to us.
In high school, I learned French and Spanish. These were positive experiences for me. The teachers were attentive and patient.

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Where do I start?  I attended French school. I translanguaged with Francophones. All language learners can benefit from having both formal and informal language learning experiences. In the introduction to Spanish course I took last year, I wished there were more interaction and practice speaking as I feel I increased my comprehension but not my output.

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I learned French and English simultaneously, but began learning Spanish as an adult. Our teacher often used role play which was fun and got us using our oral skills. The most important part of my learning process was to stop being afraid of speaking. A positive and safe space to practice was important

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I learned French in French Immersion and it helped foster community.

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I've taught junior high school students English for about 3 months. I found that the approaches teachers mostly used was GTM( grammar translation method). They usually teach one text and some vocabulary or grammatical rules in the text and let students recite

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As a class activity for a translation course I was teaching, we chose a Youtube video and participated in adding English to Korean, Korean to English subtitles. Not only was it interactive, but it was also a relevant context and medium for them that they were fully engaged in the activity. Making learning relatable and interactive gave them a sense of achievement and excitement.

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Vera:For learning English it was a positive learning process. (We had an environment of learning English in school- foreign language school, we had teachers from English -Speaking countries as well ,Chinese English teachers taught us in English and whole school encouraged students to use and speak English, we need to memorize the text from the New-Concept English book every two days and reported to teachers as well.

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Vera:For learning English it was a positive learning process. (We had an environment of learning English in school- foreign language school, we had teachers from English -Speaking countries as well ,Chinese English teachers taught us in English and whole school encouraged students to use and speak English, we need to memorize the text from the New-Concept English book every two days and reported to teachers as well.

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Having Polish as a first language made going to school in English difficult at first, but having teacher support and practice/immersion in the Canadian culture helped me bridge that gap. Unfortunately, as I immersed myself in English more, I started losing my Polish as it became irrelevant except for at home. My schooling in Polish (separate from English) was designed for Polish second language speakers, not native speakers, so eventually I stagnated in that language. This is a subtractive experience, while my French experience was additive (being taught alongsude English in the same context)

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I've learnt Russian since I was 18 years old. I was my undergrad major, so it was quite intensive because I have to spent most of my time learning it from the beginning. The alphabets are confusing, and I always pronounced a word in the wrong way. Our teachers corrected every time we made a mistake and asked us to repeat them again.

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As a person whose had to learn English at an early age, I conversed with many native speakers and would often read and listen to the news. It helped that I was a highly motivated learner. There was a particular need for me to do this because my parents’ L2 wasn’t as developed as mine. Currently, I am a ESL Instructor at McMaster University/University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies and I find that it is important to make students see the value of what it is that they are learning and to engage them. They would not learn without being engaged and I feel that as an instructor, I always try to get them to see the relevance of what it is they are learning so that they can take it and apply it to their future studies.

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I have experience as an English learner ever since I was 11 and Italian and French at other instances of my life.
I have worked as an EFL teacher in Chile and as a Spanish Language Assistant in the US.
I think one positive strategy to promote students learning and development is to give constant feedback, but even more important than that is giving them the reassurance that it is possible to learn, so that they will feel less afraid and anxious about language learning.

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I worked in a company where my second language (French) was used. The following strategies that my colleagues used to help me were very effective:
- Giving written feedback on my writing and providing an opportunity to make changes
- Providing resources to learn formal and informal vocabulary
- Discussing new vocabulary in context
- Being patient and supportive, but consistently firm with corrections

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Being a subtractive bilingual, I initially did not enjoy having to relearn my heritage language. My parents made me go to Saturday school every week for 10 years. It was an intense process, and I didn't really feel comfortable speaking it until I entered university. All other languages that I've learned since then, I've enjoyed.

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Helgi's experiences with learning a second language 

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Helgi's experiences with learning a second language 

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1. When I was 7-8 years old I moved with my family to Denmark. As I spoke only Icelandic my dad came with me to school the first week, to help me translate and speak. Eventually I learned the language :-D

2. Studying in in Sweden; I lived there for 5 months and could build on my prior knowledge of Danish - which are related languages.

3. Studying here in Canada; I know english but I feel like I'm always improving my prior english knowledge.

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My experience as a English language learner can be divided into two part. Before I went to college in the U.S, English is a subject at school. My only motivation to learn it is to get an A in the exam. I still used Mandrin mostly. However, things changed when I studied abroad. English became more and more important to me because I lived in a English-dominant  country. I speak English most of the time. I feel the learning environment makes a huge impact.

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I have had both positive and negative learning experiences. I found it helpful when teachers made an effort to make sure I understood the material by relating it to contexts that might be more familiar to me. I try to apply the same methods to my students now.

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In learning French as a foreign language, my experiences were mostly positive (at least, positive enough that I continued with it).  Teachers used videos, different text sources,  and activities that required different and authentic language use.  For example, in a class in third year, we did improv games in a class to try to use our French in new and different ways.

I'll say that my experiences in FFL were vastly different between primary, secondary, and post-secondary.  The assignments differed greatly.

As a tutor now, I find that I tend to replicate a lot of what I myself learned as a student.  I recognize I need to be more aware of how I can refine my practice.