if you are learning or have learned english as a second language, please answer?

Question

I am taking an English Language Acquisition class, and i've been reading all about different ESL programs and how great they are supposed to be for the average student who finds him/herself in an english speaking classroom when english is a strange language. it made me wonder. so if you are (or were) learning english as a second language, please answer:

what really helped you learn?
how old are/were you?
what did your teachers do that worked for you?
what did they do that didn't work at all?
were you in an ESL program? did you like it?
how would you change they way you are/were taught if you were teaching others in the same situation?

i'd really love to hear from someone who had experience with this, i think what you have to say can be more helpful than my textbooks.

Answer 1

English was my second language growing up.

1. What helped?

Repetition, music, rhymes. The Alphabet Song. Copying the letters on our own. Colorful pictures to correlate to common words.

B is for? (show picture) "ball".

Also, continuous personal reading vastly improved the scope of my understanding of the language. Reader's Digest was read from cover to cover. Not only was it very informative, (there is a vocabulary section in it, too), it was and is very entertaining and easy to bring (just the right size).

2. Age: < 3 years old.

3. What did teachers do that worked?

Plenty of examples and seatwork.

4. What did they do that didn't work at all?

Insisting that their own way of constructing a sentence or defining a word is the only way, without explaining why.

5. In an ESL program? No. Did I like it? Not applicable.

6. How would I change the way it was taught?

I would include actions to learning. For example: letter A would be written as "up(stroke), down and across. Have the learner trace the figure with her/his fingers on the paper, on air, and finally write it down.

Have story times. Let the learner hear how it is pronounced. Ask for the meaning of certain words. Let them look in a dictionary and define that word.

For example: "scale" has many meanings. It will not only teach them to understand why that word meant a certain way, it will also show them the various meanings and teach them the skill of using the dictionary.

Good luck in your endeavor, Gwen. The future students will greatly benefit from your desire to teach.

Answer 2

It is my moment language, however I style of commencing finding out it while I used to be 3, so I do not particularly consider the problems all that good. First of all, as in finding out all languages, it is new and external my alleviation zone. I regularly wish to revert again to the primary discovered language. Second, English, on a language point of view, is unnecessary in any respect. There are such a lot of exceptions, and those exceptions do not comply with the equal laws. Some letters are silent, however they don't seem to be regularly so. There isn't any truly verb conjugation. You regularly want your pronoun or it is unnecessary in any respect. The sounds are bizarre as good. You can be taught the quick and lengthy vowel laws, however in a few circumstances, they're simply one of a kind, and there's no fair rationalization as to why you've gotten stated some thing another way. For instance: Look is stated extra of Luhk. But by way of that rule, should not Roof be stated Ruff? It isn't in anyway probably the most problematic language to be taught, however it's not convenient. If I needed to decide on, I believe the verb conjugations are probably the most problematic facet. I consider my confusion in basic university, as to why exact phrases had been exact methods, and I in no way gave the impression to fully grasp the solutions my academics spit out. Most all different languages have verb conjugations, ordinary laws that on the whole paintings. When there are styles, it is less difficult to be taught. English lacks the ones styles, which makes it problematic.

Answer 3

Hey
I am 16. I learn englis 14 months time. I had a mother tongue teacher and some hungarian english teacher. They had different tasks. The american teacher helped a lot and the grammar excercises. It is the hardest.