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. 

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.

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

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