50 Hour TESOL

Foreign language experienceLearning foreign language can be fun or nightmare, easy or difficult depending on how you learn. I've been learning english myself for many years now, and I know that there is no way to acquire foreign language without any efforts. But when you make efforts from your good motivation not from the obligation, learning the language can be fun and wonderful experiences. I started learning english as an obligation. In my country, we had to study english at middle school and high school for 6 years, and usually practiced a lots of grammar, some vocabulary, reading and writing. It makes sense because we don't use the same alphabets for our mother tongue, so we need to get used to use english alphabets. And the grammar of our mother tongue is very different from the one of english, so we learned it taking advantages of monolingual class. But speaking practices were not enough since teachers themselves were not good at speaking. And also we didn't have so much chances to brush up the listening skill. As the result of that, in my country in general, people can read and write english, but cannot speak and listen very well. Some people take lessons in private schools after they graduate high school and continue learning english, so did I. In this kind of lessons, the teachers are mostly native speakers, and the students can practice speaking and listening including actual conversations. But I didn't learn so much of it even in those lessons. I've learned it in actual situations. I liked learning english since I was in middle school because the classes were fun for me, but that was not only a reason that I continued studying. I had many motivations for that. When I was in university, I was very curious about foreign countries and wished to live in outside of my country. I wanted to read my favorite books written by American or British writers in its original language. After I started to travel abroad, I made friends there and wanted to communicate with them. And I happened to get into the situation that I had to stay in New York for many years, and then now I have to communicate with my own sons in english. (I'm also learning spanish now.) So do I still appreciate english lessons? Why do I want to teach english then? I still think that there are something the teacher can help students to learn. Motivations are extremely important to learn foreign language. But it can be lost sometimes and it's not easy to keep them up all the time. One thing that the teacher can do is helping students to keep up their motivation. And it is also important to make the class as a fun place and time. People learn more things when they are enjoying doing it. So I still see the possibility and meaning to teach the language to help people who want to learn to discover new world and get better opportunities. And I will never stop learning foreign languages myself to open my eyes and heart wider. Learning the language is one way of self-discovering journey.