The Importance Of Language Learning

Context is also significant in determining what type of language is appropriate in a specific setting. Consider how an individual’s language changes according to the social environment. An example of this is the difference between how someone might speak to a friend over coffee and how they speak during a job interview. To put this in an educational setting, how an early childhood educator would speak to their students, opposed to the language used by a high school educator. Emmitt, Zbaracki, Komesaroff and Pollock (2010) noted that there are multiple versions of language within the English language (p. 50). Each profession develops a jargon specific to their field. This is known as ‘discourse’, described by Flowerdew (2012) as “language in its context of use.” (p. 1). Understanding the discourse specific to a field of interest enables an individual to interact and participate within that setting (Flowerdew, 2012, p. 1). For example, the education profession uses a discourse which includes terms such as pedagogy, curriculum, and syllabus. When interacting professionally within an education Discourse, it is expected that these terms are understood in context.

Learning a foreign language is very useful for young people today with rising global connections. For that reason, many universities offer foreign language classes to improve young people’s language skills. Thereby (or therefore?) , I wanted to observe a language class at my university. On the 1st week of July, I went to a Japanese language classroom in the Wellman Hall. After the brief grammar lecture, the instructor used social learning activities(?) by dividing the class into groups of 3 students. Throughout the group activity, the instructor observed the use of grammar and provided feedback. At the corner, I observed a group creating a dialog based on the PowerPoint instruction. Once the instructor stated a time limit for the activity, the students started to come up with several different sentences, correcting each other’s whenever someone made a mistake. For the most of the time, students would use the grammar correctly, but sometimes they used wrong verb tenses or used wrong passive forms. Throughout this activity, the students displayed active learning by participating in a group activity and even joked about how some words sound like a funny word. For the next activity, the Vygotsky’s theory, Zone of Proximal Development was used when the instructor made students read after the audio file, sounding each word out loud. Students listened to the audio file first, then sound out the words. Some students seemed to struggle with several words written in Kanji (Chinese

Language teaching is an area that fascinates many researchers because of the important roles that language plays in our society. As a language teacher, I am one of the researchers who wish to carry on research on specific aspects of language teaching such as reading in this case, to be able to help learners especially at beginning levels to establish strong foundations in their academics. As a teacher, I always want the best for my learners. Therefore, I like to prepare materials for use in teaching these students very carefully, and to select the best methodologies for teaching to ensure that every student benefits from the teaching and learning experience. When it comes to teaching reading, I wish to provide as much assistance as possible to my learners to help them learn to read. Reading ability is a basis for success to learners, as it affects their understanding in all other courses they take, which require reading.

“…poetry has primarily to do with the expression of feeling and emotion: and […] feeling and emotion are particular; whereas thought is general. It is easier to think in a foreign language than it is to feel in it. Therefore, no art is more stubbornly national than poetry. A people may have its language taken away from it, suppressed, and another language compelled upon the schools; but unless you teach that people to feel in a new language, you have not eradicated the old one, and it will reappear in poetry, which is a vehicle of feeling.” (T.S. Eliot, On Poetry and Poets, London: Faber and Faber: 5th

Entrepreneurship is regarded as one of the most important determinants of the industrial growth of the country.The dearth of the entrepreneul and managerial skills is one of the most common problems being faced by all under developed economies.Moreover,the potential for the employment of students graduating from professional colleges is enormous,but one major handicap which many of them face is poor communicative ability in English.Proficiency in English is recognised globally as a pre-requisite for entry into the work place.Since English plays a key role in the domains of entrepreneurship,corporate sectors and international business,its use has to be standardised,simplified,made more functional and intelligible. Students of professional colleges need a great deal of help in improving their ability in English language proficiency so as to entrepreneur and obtain easier entry into the corporate world.Proficiency in communication skills develops ability to grasp opportunities to offer economic advantages, maximising gains and above all building confidence in every individual that one could make things happen.

“The land flourished because it was fed from so many sources-because it was nourished by so many cultures and traditions and peoples” (Johnson). In today’s society, immigration is a controversial topic. Regardless of current views towards immigration, the nation is experiencing a daily influx of immigrants, particularly those with Hispanic heritage. To address this dramatic increase, a new program, The Influential, is effectively working to educate both U.S. citizens and immigrants. Instead of students taking two years of Spanish in high school, students will be mandated to take Spanish in the fifth grade and above. The Influential program focuses primarily on school aged children, affecting change in the mindsets of the nation’s youth that will carry the country into a more culturally aware future.

In the nineteenth century, the United States set the precedence for racism. While the problems may appear consummated, the people of today know that is not totally the case. With the amount of cultural presence continuously growing, the ubiquity of foreign language should be taken more seriously. “One reason to learn them [foreign languages] is because they are tickets to being able to participate in the culture of the people who speak them, just by virtue of the fact that it is their code,” begins McWhorter of TED (McWhorter, 2016). Consequently, schools should offer foreign language classes sooner in a child’s life than freshman year of high school because this type of learning introduces them to cultural differences, increases their learning abilities and helps them understand learning styles of varying levels.

I believe that learning a secondary language is necessary to get where you want to go in life. For most people that have jobs there is always going to be a customer or another co worker that speaks a different language than you. You should learn a different language for traveling purposes so if you want to go to a different country you will know the main language in that country. Learning a different language is good to know to make friends living in other places that know a different language than you. Knowing a secondary language is a graduation requirement and can even help you improve your test scores.

In American, it is a given that there will be moments in life where a person may encounter barriers. A car can only go so far without gasoline and there is only so far in life a person can go without encountering a language barrier in America, the land of the culturally diverse. Most of today’s American youth are not being equipped the skills that can be more valuable to them in their futures besides the basic core focuses. The American education system lacks arts and language education programs that are needed that help enhance student performance in more than just their studies. To improve the communication and understanding skills that children have, the American education system needs to improve foreign language education in all grade levels and schools need to focus more on arts education to improve the overall student performance.

I am an international student from China. English is required for every student to learn as a second language in China. I was exposed to English in the first grade. General grammatical structure and vocabulary are taught through primary school to high school. My parents also enrolled me to multiple English summer camps in order to put me in an environment where English is the only language spoken by students and foreign teachers. My oral skills were improved through the experience of summer camps. In the formal English class, the teacher would use numerous strategies to teach. For instance, the teacher used cassettes to play the textbook’s readings in order to help students to learn the correct pronunciation. In the morning, students were often required to read out loud and repeat the vocabulary learned on the previous day to memorize the vocabulary. Chinese and English were both used by the teacher to teach in class. Through my secondary school experience of learning English, I would say the things I learned in English class gave me a basic understanding of the sentence structure and a limited vocabulary expansion. By the time when I started studying abroad in the United States, I realized what I learned in China were not enough. I had a hard time to understand the teacher’s instruction and communicate with my host family. My host family encouraged me to join the school’s cheerleading team and other school activities. This experience gave me a chance to bond with American

What inspires a man to forge his linguistic capabilities of his primary language from sub-rudimentary level, into an art form? Well, as I am only a singular individual, I cannot answer for the entirety of society, but I can give you a record of a period of my life that motivated me to attempt to excel at learning the English Language. So, what inspired me to learn the English Language better than what I knew beforehand? The answer is not as straight forward. I had many things that happened to me around the same time, the first event was my experiences in Speech and Debate. The Second was what I learned in English Class and History Class. Finally, was me learning military tactics, and philosophy. All of these events helped me to come to the conclusion that in order to be an excellent leader and be a persuasive speaker or writer, one must know the language of his subordinates, peers, and superiors, and be able to communicate effectively with them.

“During the first two or three years of development, a child requires interaction with other language-users in order to bring the general language capacity into contact with a particular language such as English.” (Yule, The Study of Language, 2010)

In the era of internationalization, great value is placed on global understanding. The acquisition of foreign languages and multicultural awareness has become an essential asset for new generations. Furthermore, learning a foreign language has been shown to provide students with various additional benefits: students gain access to the cultural and intellectual heritage of other cultures while obtaining a new perspective on the structure and complexity of their own language and culture. For most students, fulfilling the college foreign language requirement is not an issue. However, for students with disabilities, achieving this requirement might be more difficult or even impossible, since students identified as having one or more disabilities have traditionally been excluded from the foreign language classroom. According to Shifrer, Callahan, and Muller (2013), only 26% of students labeled with a disability completes one foreign language high school credit; in contrast with 79% of not labeled students. Because of this, students with disabilities have been customarily denied the benefits foreign language acquisition provides, including admission to post-secondary education institutions.

* In the educational field, the teaching learning cycle is a model used in contemporary teaching in both school and adult educational settings. Rothery (1996 in Derewianka & Jones 2012, pg 43) who originally developed the model used this to aim at disadvantaged children for teaching literacy and writing in the KLA (Key learning areas) who were from socially disadvantaged areas. Over time the model has been phased across other areas of the English language such as listening, speaking, reading as well as writing. The key involvement of the teacher also known as ‘expert other’ in the teaching learning cycle is guiding the learner to understand key concepts in academic literacy through use of scaffolding strategies to transform students

English is one of the most spoken languages all over the world and for many people become a requirement in different area as work, school, social and cultural. This essay will explain through the use of research how this particular student learns English as a foreign language; needs, influences, strategies and intelligence.