A Mom’s Story of Language Acquisition
Elena Volkova, Uzbekistan
Elena Volkova a Course Leader for the Postgraduate Course in Education at Westminster International University in Tashkent. She is an active member of ELT community and is a chief editor of Active Learning and Teaching of Foreign Language in Uzbekistan (ALT FL) magazine. The area of her current professional interest rests in teachers learning opportunities with specific focus on Practitioner Action Research and Workplace Learning. E-mail: evolkova@wiut.uz
Menu
Introduction
Background
Home-made learning
Immersion experience
School experience
Present situation
References
I taught English for 12 years, and then moved to generic teacher education that has become my major professional focus. But then, last year, I had to wear my EL teacher shoes again to teach English to my 12-year old son. In this article, I reflect on his English language learning experience. His story is relatively unique and thus I believe many teachers and parents would be able to benefit from reading and thinking about it.
As a language teacher with extensive experience, I have always been particular about how my own son will learn English. Obviously, I wanted best teachers, best learning environment and best course books. From the time when he was 3.5, I was constantly conveying a message to him about the importance of knowing a foreign language. I believe I was doing this so persistently, that instead of inspiring my son I made him tired.
In the past both his father and I, being fluent English speakers, tried to use simple English words and constructions wherever and whenever possible hoping to build his vocabulary. This technique did not prove to be as useful and helpful as we hoped, as I could hardly see any noticeable results in our son’s language learning or enthusiasm. However, I might be mistaken.
Later, when he was five and in the coming four years, I occasionally organized ‘official home lessons’ and we spent around 30 minutes to do some tasks in English, sometimes from books but more often with the help of materials at-hand – what I could find in my kitchen, or a drawer. I remember we talked about traveling while looking at maps or recently used tickets; about food, while sorting out the refrigerator; and about family, while enjoying looking at some photos. His attention could be sustained for 15 minutes and the next 15 minutes I was struggling not to slap my dear student for misbehaviour and lack of true enthusiasm.
We managed to produce and remember for a short period of time the phrases like:
- How do you travel to Bukhara?
I travel to Bukhara by train.
- How do you travel to India?
I travel to India by plane.
- How do you travel to school?
I travel to school by bicycle.
Looking back at that time, I have to admit that I did refer to his life at all times when selecting learning materials, but was not the best teacher as the classes happened very occasionally – once a month or even two months. And although he seemed to enjoy them and I was very satisfied with his learning outcomes, there was not much use for ‘laying the solid foundation’ of his knowledge. However, I again might have been mistaken.
I think he never took any of the home-made lessons seriously, as I was a mother and he was a son. I used to blame myself for not creating opportunities for someone so dear and instead spending much more effort and energy for my students at the university who were only strangers. But then, I calmed myself down thinking that when the time to study English at school comes, and in our country it happens at the age of 10-11, we would approach the learning process with full seriousness.
Then there came another learning opportunity. When Danil was five and a half in 2010, I took him to London where I visited for a business trip for a week. At that time, I had a friend in the UK who agreed to take care of my son while I was away for two-full-day meetings. The friend was 40 years old and a native English speaker. He could not communicate with my son in Russian, because he only knew one word ‘Spasibo’, meaning ‘Thank you”. My son knew three English phrases that I had helped him to memorise and this was his survival English: ‘I want water, I need toilet, I want chocolate’.
Obviously, I was worried how the two would manage, but there was no other option. Reflecting on that experience, I admit that I was surprised that they not only managed fine, but also established good rapport and enjoyed both days they spent together. Uncle Chris reported to me in the evenings that Danil had not experienced any difficulties. He had fallen in love with a British girl at the playground, he had entered a fight with a British boy over some toys they had been playing with, he had been jumping around the tube carriage entertaining other passengers. Danil reported that there had been no problems but one. Uncle Chris, apart from communicating normal English language, which Danil had reassured me he had understood completely, was saying one word all the time that Danil did not want to be used on him. ‘Fuu, Danil!’ In Russian this is how dogs are being prohibited from doing something. Uncle Chris spent some time in our country and learnt the word from a Russian friend who had a dog that needed walking and playing with. When I explained the ‘fuu’ word to him, we had a very good laugh all together.
Apart from my modest teaching from his childhood, this was the first instance of pure immersion and language acquisition for my son, and I could almost visualize Stephen Krashen and Diana Larsen-Freeman writing their books and referring to similar examples. ‘In the real world, conversations with sympathetic native speakers who are willing to help the acquirer understand are very helpful’ (Krashen, 1981)
My deep belief in language acquisition strengthened and became a guiding principle in what to follow. I could see the evidence that the best methods in Krashen’s (1981, 44) words are ‘those that supply comprehensible input in low anxiety situations.’ He goes on to say that these methods do not force early production in the second language, but allow students to produce when they are ready”
In 2014, Danil graduated from the primary school quite successfully and I was absolutely and profoundly sure that it was the time for him to learn English properly – systematically and substantially. But life gave us another turn. Since the teachers and the available resources at a public school he went to were not adequate, I decided to move him to a private well-equipped establishment. (Fortunately, we have more and more schools like this in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan.
In this private school, where he is still studying, children start learning English from the first grade. And he joined them at the fifth grade which meant, the fifth year of English language study! Students had already been exposed to the language and the course book was pre-intermediate. I panicked for a moment and then remembered Krashen and Larsen-Freeman again who both advocate that “language acquisition does not require extensive use of conscious grammatical rules, and does not require tedious drills”. (Krashen, 1981, 58) I hoped that immersion into a new language learning environment would help Danil to assimilate with the group. I had a conversation with the teacher explaining that my son would probably experience some difficulties in class and asked the teacher not to single him out, but only be aware of the fact. And Danil and I started to read the texts and do the exercises as per curriculum at home. The first big story we read in English, the Red Riding Hood, was full of vocabulary and past simple grammar – quite tough for someone at Danil’s level. I asked him to read it for me and say if he understood the overall idea. I demanded reading aloud as I needed to ensure that he knew how the words were pronounced just in case he was asked to read in class. We did not translate the text word for word orally, neither did we have a picking-out-the-unknown-words exercise – and this was my deliberate decision. I made effort to explain to him that there was no need to dig into small words taken out of the context and have them amputated and memorized meaninglessly. He gladly agreed, because it meant less work to be done!
To my comfort and satisfaction reading was not bad, understanding was even better. How did he do it? I still have no clear answer to this question. I sometimes required a translation of a separate word and he would reply that he did not know but he understood the plot. This was enough for me.
In the same manner we dealt with all texts from the book – English World by Bowen and Hocking published by Macmillan. The easiest and the most favourite part for Danil was to do exercises that followed the texts. He was quick with most of multiple choice, complete the sentence, choose the right word, make the right order tasks requiring only limited help. Usually he used his intuition and gut feeling and most often he did all right.
To summarise the first year of his English study I should highlight that he has developed his skills in:
- Reading texts, known and unknown
- Understanding major parts of what he has read
- Translating parts of texts into Russian
- Accomplishing exercises from the book
And, surprisingly,
- Understanding the major part of MY spoken language
The time of the final exam came and my son was absolutely worried that he would not be able to pass. This went so far that I had to give him tranquilizers on the day of the exam. Panic paralyzed his thinking and caused him to forget what he had learnt in English. I know that he suffered. Unfortunately for Danil, the exam was not testing what he had developed and this was the reason for terror and tremor. Students had to speak about the stories and this is where the biggest problem lied. I should have approached the teacher again, I should have provided her some details of how he acquired the language rather than leant it and what his abilities were, I should have made a case. I could have explained that according to Krashen’s Monitor Theory (1981) Danil can be characterised as an ‘underuser’ and he can still be considered successful, because the primary goal is not to produce utterances that are grammatically correct but to communicate the message.
Instead, I tried to help him to construct very basic sentences to describe the mind maps that we created for each text. I know this was a way beyond the Zone of his Proximal Development and Vigotskiy (1978) would not approve me in any sense. But this is what Danil had to go through as this is real life of formal schooling. At that time I wanted to cry out loud to support Illich’s ‘De-schooling society’ (1970) and many others who bring evidence that formal schooling does not care about the learners’ aptitude, kills motivation and decrease the attitude to learning.
Growing negative perception about the exam procedures, Danil eventually passed the exam and we made a promise to each other that after the summer vacation English will become a priority number one.
At the moment when I am writing this reflection and you are reading these lines, it has been three months since we started learning in a group of three students having classes with me as a teacher twice a week. I hope that the new learning conditions, environment and requirements will pay off. I organize each class putting the ideas of language acquisition first and language learning to follow. As I said before, I truly believe in meaningfulness of communication and thus there are tasks with appropriate cognitive challenge for every class. How difficult it is to get Danil engaged! If the task is not challenging enough and he does not have an opportunity to ‘shine’, he is lost to boredom and daydreaming.
I hope we will be able to boast with some tangible results soon and he will start producing utterance more freely and effortlessly. I believe that the fact the he understands and responds (more often in his mother tongue still) to major part of the communication turned to him is indeed his solid foundation of the language. Its foundation is the valuable speckles-words used by parents in the childhood, the bits and pieces of the home lessons, the communication with Uncle Chris, and immersion with the school English learning.
I cannot but finish quoting Krashen (1981:1) that ‘….language acquisition and conscious language learning, (…) are interrelated in a definite way: subconscious acquisition appears to be far more
important’.
The next learning opportunity that I plan in the future is a month in a summer camp of an international school to test if formal learning (at schools and during our home classes) has helped Danil to progress.
Illich, I. (1971) Deschooling Society. London: Calder and Boyers Ltd
Krashen S.D. (1981) Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning. Pergamon Press, UK
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978) Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. (M.
Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman, Eds.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
|
