Second Language Learning journey

This essay will present some information and answers about me as a non-

native English speaker who has started to learn English after the age of 10.

I started learning English in a public school when I was in the 7 th grade.

teaching was not good. The teachers were not well qualified, and the books were not

interesting for the students. After I have graduated from Secondary School, I decided

to study English in an institute to improve my language as I have not got that well

improvement in school. In the institute I could learn English well because of many

factors such as, well qualified teachers, interesting books, few number of students in

the class … etc. This made me love English and want to learn more and more. As a

result I decided to enroll to Faculty of Arts, English Department. by the time I am in

the fourth level in the college, I realized that I will have a certificate not a language. I

have been taught English as a subject not as a language to communicate. However,

because I am a motivated girl, I started to learn English at home by watching movies,

listening to songs and watching some educational videos on YouTube as strategies to

improve me language.

When I was asked about the most difficult skill to learn, I said that writing is

the most difficult skill because “remembering the correct spelling of words is hard,

also it is hard to write in a formal way”. I could improve my writing by reading a lot,

which helped me in memorizing new words with the correct spelling and let me see

the correct way of writing essays. Consequently, this made me overcome some of this

difficulty.

Learning English was not difficult because I love this language and have a

motivation that keeps me excited and eager to learn every single thing about English.
But I am struggling with learning the correct pronunciation of some words, especially

those that I have learnt in the past in a wrong way. I used to care about memorizing as

much vocabulary as I can without paying attention to their pronunciation. As a result,

these days I am facing difficulty in correcting those words that have stuck in my

mind. Studying Phonetics at college has helped me slightly in using the dictionary in a

way to pronounce words correctly. In addition, I keep listening songs and watching

movies as much as I can in order to speak fluently.

I think that learning a second language in an early age is very good and

helpful because children’s minds are not like adults’. They can keep words and

sentences fast, the children’s brains are still fresh and ready to get any information”.

But, In my opinion, it is not difficult for adults to get the language and speak it as

natives even if they learned it after the age of 10, and I know a lot of people who

started learning English in a late age, but they are perfect and when I listen to them I

cannot recognize what their mother tongue is it Arabic or English”. In my opinion,

motivation, confidence and effort are the main things that help a second language

learner to be a native-like.

Lastly, I wish that a native English teacher taught me the language, because in

my journey to learn English I had many non-native English teachers who used Arabic

a lot in their classes and that affected negatively on my language learning. The

amount of English input that I have got from English teachers was little and

inapplicable to use it for communication. as they used Arabic language even when

they gave us instructions or communicated with us.

Prepared by: Afaf