The interview continued: Marcela learns English in England
S5: Marcela attends an Summer School in England
Marcela describes how she went to England to a Summer School to learn English, initially for two months, but she then extended this. She attended class every day Monday-Friday, from 9am-12pm, 12-3pm or from 3-6pm and worked part-time as a waitress. Marcela describes how the lessons, like the ones with the British Council, were a lot of fun and conducted by a native English speaker. She had the new opportunity of learning and speaking with students from a range of different countries such as Italy and Brazil. Marcela describes how she was exposed to many different cultures and they discussed how they lived. They listened to a lot of popular songs. Marcela realised that she would need to keep learning English for a whole year to gain fluency in the spoken language, so that she could work in a professional job.
S6: Marcela read her first novels in English
Marcela describes how she started reading books in English. The first book she read was "Men are from Mars, and Women are from Venus" (Grey, 1993). This gave her confidence as she could now read books in English. Marcela improves her English reading skills in an informal setting, out of the classroom, by reading English novels borrowed from the library.
S7: Marcela practices speaking English
Marcela describes how she mainly spoke English with native English speakers, but also spoke with her sister and cousin in her native tongue. She says"I still spoke a lot my native language". It is noted Marcela omits the preposition 'of' in this sentence between the words 'lot' and 'my'. Here Marcela continued to acquire her spoken English in the informal setting of communicating in English with native speaking locals.
S8: Marcela describes how she learnt English in England at the Summer School
Marcela describes how she benefited from the lessons in England taught by native English speakers. The courses, according to Marcela, were fun which made it is easier for her to learn English. Marcela notes that the lessons were more fun as they could talk about what they wanted to talk about, from the various countries. She explains how there wasn't such a focus on grammar, or "prescribed things". The talk according to Marcela was "natural", talking about things they were interested in. Marcela says that, as with any subject, if you catch the student's interest and then encourage them and talk in English, that is the way to improve English.
Marcela describes how in contrast to this style of learning, when she learnt English in Slovakia in primary school they had a lot of rote, repetition of leaning of grammar rules that involved reading in Slovac and then in English and then memorising the words. She notes that her studies were all about memorising. Marcela says however, that with the British Council and in England they taught English by giving you the English word and then explaining it in different ways in English, either in a simple way or by using a picture, so you are learning in a natural way, like a young child. According to Marcela, you can translate words, but not sentences easily, as Slovakia has completely different grammar from English. Marcela explained that what was more helpful than just learning grammar rules, was having real life conversations and listening to the spoken language.
It was noted that Marcela made the following mistakes when speaking.
"Our studies are very about memorising". Here Marcela uses the present tense plural 'are' instead of the past tense plural of 'were'.
"They will explain it in different way, in English maybe in a simpler way, or even they use picture"
In this sentence it is noted that Marcela omits the article of 'a' and the 's' off the words 'way' and 'picture'. See previous blog page for Richards (1971, in Brown, 2007, p.225) table which show the typical English intralingual errors in the use of articles.
The way Marcela was taught by both the British Council in Slovakia and at the Summer School in England aligns with the cognitive theories of SLA. Krashen's (1985, in Mitchell & Myles, 2004), natural approach to language learning which included basic communication skills both in written, reading and speaking in terms of situations, functions and topics. According to Krashen's natural approach comprehensible input is provided in a classroom environment that allows for the comprehension of input by minimising learner's anxiety and maximises confidence. The classroom should therefore be a friendly place using high interest subject matter, and by using resources from the real world. Marcela's positive learning experiences with the British Council and in England, also aligned with Long's (1981, 1983, in Mitchell et al., 2019) Interaction Hypothesis which proposed, that meaningful conversation helps with the comprehension of input by L2 learners.
S9: Marcela further describes her language learning experiences in England
Marcela describes how the internet was just starting when she was learning English in England in the 1990's. They learnt by listening to English spoken on a cassette player, English pop songs, watched films and read real articles from newspapers. The real articles were in contrast to the text books used when Marcela was learning English in Slovakia where the articles were made up using the English words. Marcela says that everything was based on real life.
Applying this to the cognitive theories of SLA, the real life input gave the learning meaning and created a low affective filter by creating an interesting, friendly and relaxed mood, thus helping with language acquisition.
Mitchell, R., & Myles, F. (2004). Second Language Learning Theories. (2nd ed). London:Arnold
Mitchell, R, Myles, F., & Marsden, E. (2019) Second Language Learning Theories. 4 Routledge.
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