MY EXPERIENCE AS A SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNER

INPUT

When I set up to investigate the way I learned my second language I thought that I had to start, according to linguists, by overlooking Input and interaction as far as my experience as language learner is concerned.

As to the three views of input in language acquisition stated by Dr Ellis in chapter 6, page 127, I had very little L2 data available as input in the very beginning of my learning studies. However, I had quite a great activated mechanisms accounting for how my L2 would be processed along my studies.

Although behaviourist theory considers learners as a producing machine, I am myself  a bit of a language producing machine as well as a grand initiator as mentioned by the  Nativist theory of learning.

My First Insight into My Second Language

My first insight into the English language took place when I was   fifteen years old. At that time I was going to Junior High school in a tiny farming village with only about five hundred inhabitants and low level competence teachers, on this account, We  did not have English lessons in our school. At the time of my first contact with my second language I was attending to the 6^th grade. My parents had bought their first run on battery radio, which I could never had the chance of laying my hands on. It was there, on the upper shelf of an 30-year old shelf. It was always tuned into Radio Record de São paulo, Eli Correia`s programme. My very first words I could hear was through English songs by Elton John, Bee Gees, Beetles and so on. As I becoming an adolescent and I started going out with my friends I would drop by the only café opposite my school. There, I used to listen to the song `Pigeon Without a dove, Skyline Pigeon and Mother by John Lennon.` I had always gotten marvelled, For me, it was a dream to get to know what they said in those beautiful songs, until one day, I came across the song lyrics for the song skyline  Pigeon by Elton John, since then I started fulfilling my desire for learning English. I remember that as I laid my hands on that lyrics  I tried to translate it, but it came to be a disaster, of course. Although my failure was evident I did not give up, soon after that, I took hold of the lyrics for Pigeon without a Dove, by then, with the help of an old-fashioned bilingual English dictionary, I could manage to translate some of the sentences what made me feel really proud of myself.

Two years later after finishing Junior High School, I moved to Goiania and having concluded the 8ªgrade  Junior High School I set up to High school.

For my very disappointment, the course that I had chosen to take was a two-year accounting technical course and being so, English was not taught in this kind of courses. Nevertheless, I came across an old teach yourself English book volumes one to three and  set up to carry it on by myself. All the learning was carried out through translation and as to pronunciation it was transcribed under every words the ways we pronounce them.

Although I did not have English as part of my High School Programme, somewhat, I managed to pass university entrance examination for the first time I took it. As I had the chance to choose to apply for the first and second option in my vestibular, I choose English as my first as well as my second optional course.

I think I managed to pass the English test because I had already known a bit of grammar and as I had a ´´good knowledge ´´ of laser, the reading text proposed at that time.

My experience in the first term  in college was a disgusting, disastrous one, first of all because I had come from a very poor linguistic as well financial background, my parents had no education at all, unlike my peers that had already been studying English for at least three to seven years of their life, I had no exposure to the target language at all, the only few words I knew were those one I had come across from  `Inglês sem Mestre` by professor Amadeu Marques. I remember it as if it were today, we were twelve students in the group, I myself being the only man. whereas all my colleagues could already speak a good English, I could hardly utter some  simple utterances such as `what is your name?`. I can remember my very first minutes of class, when my teacher Yeda Costa stepped  into the classroom greeting us good morning. That was my first time I had heard real spoken English in a one to one contact. Miss Costa was said to be the strictest teacher in the Modern Language Department. She was  said to be the one who had never given any chance to her students in any way. She was said to be sarcastic and critical, she would play really hard on the students. So there was her, my a medium height dark-skinned woman, my first teacher of English. As soon as she put her books down and mutter some words in English, she had us in a circle and started inquiring us about our life. As it came to my turn to speak, I panicked, however, I told myself `come on, it is just the beginning, the worst is still to come`. All my colleagues stared at me in great amazement. Whose `Tupiniquin-English`  was that?, they told me some years later. Since then, as I was as poor as a church mouse and could not even buy my course books, I would borrowed them from my colleagues and studied for four long years using photocopies that I used to run off every week of each month.

 At that time, as I was unemployed I  used to work in a construction company and I used to carry out the most difficult tasks of my whole life.

Going back to classroom, it took me one semester in this out of the world experience, I felt myself a fish out of water once I could not communicate properly as my peers would do so. I could not interact to my peers nor in English neither in Portuguese once They would look down on me. There was a great hostile prejudice against me in classroom. My poor language, social background as well as appearance all gave myself away.

At the end of my first term, my teacher came to talk to me in private and in a severe way, she told me that I could try any other course but languages, specially English. ´´You had better quit English because here in college the English language is aimed at those people who have already gotten some experiences in the language and as I see it you were not born for learning languages ´´said my teacher.

That was not a demotivation for me because I had gotten the best grades in my written tests taht semester, 8.8   general average.

Although my teacher had been so short-sighted, for her amazement, she congratulated me on having the highest grades in my written exams.

As we came to the beginning of the coming semester, in my first day of class I was introduced to my second teacher, Maria das Graças Santana, who I myself consider to be the nicest person in this world, As soon as the class was over, she called me to talk in private and she said that she could not understand why I could not manage to speak the language once I had been the best student in that semester. After being long enquired I asked her for help and she told me that one thing I could o was to memorise the dialogues, that is, preparing myself before coming to class.

By then, I borrowed from her cassette tapes recorded them and started listening to them at home. At this time although totally unconsciously I began to use my first theory of learning behaviourist learning theory applied in the 1960s as stated by Ellis in his book Understanding Second Language Acquisition, page 20.

I  would very much applied behaviourist techniques in learning my second language. I remember that I would memorise long list of functional words, that is, activating my formulaic speech and going into the classroom where I would hypothesis test them. For me it all was a question of habit formation because I would internalise the dialogues by listening to the same conversation over and over and as a result, when I was in classroom I after being long submitted by the stimulus that was my desire to keep up with my peers, I had the so long waited response, that was the understanding by my teacher and colleagues, of course there were times in which the answers did not come up the way I expected them  to because all I knew was only pre fabricated sentences, although I did not gave up, I would pretend I could understand and nod my head back and forth as the conversation carried on, only by having some of the teacher´s gist I could manage to carry on my tasks. As I could observe after reading the master piece ´´ Understanding Second Language Acquisition ´´ by Dr Ellis, while learning my second language, although I went through proactive inhibition by trying to transfer   the realisation device from my first language into the second, I could little by little manage to overcome errors by being very attentive to them.  I was always extremely careful and whenever I made a mistake I would jot it down and write sentences using it, rehearsing it until I could manage to produce it correctly. Specially when it came to pronunciation, what I have always considered to be an absolutely important aspect in language learning.

CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS

Another strategy I used very much when learning my second language was Contrastive Analysis. As Lado (1957:23) points out´´The teacher who has made a comparison of the foreign language with the native language of the students will know better what the real problems are and can provide for teaching them´´. I myself would be daring to add to Dr Lado ´even so the student, As I see it, I did and I have always done Contrastive Analysis in some ways. I would take the form of the psychological rationale of Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis that  would predict what would come next and which errors I would make. Also I used my L1 interference as a kind of learning strategy, for I used my first language knowledge  to serve as input into the process of hypothesis generation. Sridhar (1981) I am sure my first language knowledge, according to Corder (1978b p. 37), helped me facilitate the developmental process of learning my second language, it could help me progress more rapidly along the ´universal´ route when I compared L1 to L2, although there

were not as many similarities.

CONTRASTIVE PRAGMATICS

Another important aspect of Second Language Acquisition I Used along my learning process was that of Contrastive Pragmatics Lado (1957)  where I used to take particular verb tenses or functional structures of the target language and compare them to my L1. By doing this, I could observe the similarities and differences between both languages. ´´ Contrastive Pragmatics is not just about comparing the communicative functions of different languages.´´ This analysis of its linguistic realisation helped me understand and use them in a more safely way. Surely enough, I bumped into many embarrassing situations when using my pre fabricated uncontextualized realisations.

INTERLANGUAGE AND THE ´NATURAL´ ROUTE OF DEVELOPMENT

´´It is claimed that Second language learning learners acquire a knowledge of L2 in a fixed order as a result of a predisposition toi process language data in highly specific ways.(Ellis), according to researchers, all learners follow a ´universal´ route that is largely influenced by such factors as the age of the learner, the context in which learning is taking place, or the learner´s L1 background´´ although researchers claimed these factors to be true, in my point of view as a language learner, they were not totally so when applying to my experience, as it can be observed I survived the most demotivating language learning environment and in some ways I could make through it. They acted in a reversing way. I think that my  acquisition ´Device´ Avram Noam Chomsky (1966),which contains the ´Universal Grammar´ worked together and helped me to elicit from my poor very beginning input so as to learn.  Although some views of the Mentalist theory of language learning such as those of McNeill (1966:61) et alii, my ´acquisition device´did not totally attrophied as I got older, this is, at least, my humble point of view according to what I can reckon from my experience as a language learner.

INTERLANGUAGE

As it is stated by Nemser (1971) the assumptions about interlanguage are: ´´at any given time the approximate  system is distinct from the L1 and L2, the approximate system is distinct from the L1 and L2, the approximate systems form an evolving series, and that a given contact situation, the  approximate systems of learners at the same stage of proficiency roughly coincide ´´

``All learners , both L1 and L2 make errors in order to test out certain  hypotheses  about the nature  of the language they are learning. Corder (1976) as he follows in his discussion, the making of errors constituted a strategy,  that made it evident learning-internal processing of the language. As a language learner I myself made errors all the time and as far as  I can  remember, after trying to internalise functional structures I would, instantly test them out. although I made blatant errors I would not give it up.

learn languages . This and many other facts were an enormous de-motivating and disappointing  input she gave me if it had not been for my `Acquisition Device` that was deeply active in my brain, I was sure that I was endowed to acquire target language at any cost in my life, my innate capacity, willingness was active all the time and that would only be a question of time and exposure to the target language my mostly deep reward was to come  to come to at  end of that tunnel   I had to learn the language.

Even though my adorable  teacher, to whom I still carried on looking up to undermined me I did not take into account her `advice `and after having got my kindhearted teacher´s sympathetic insight, I started preparing two units in advance , by doing this, I would come prepared for every class, there was times in which the teacher would get really surprised to see how well I could handle those functional words, structures, word order and so on. As in my first semester I received  an Oxford monolingual English Dictionary as a present from my  wife, I turned to it whenever I came across any doubt. I had a great range of vocabulary and idiomatic expressions that I used to pick up from my dictionary. I would make intensive dictionary study, and as pointed out by Schumann  and Schumann, I kept my own diary to record my progress through the semester. Little by little I started highlighting  words and expressions in the dictionary so as to consolidate them later on.

Individual Learner differences

By the time  I became a bit more fluent, my colleagues became more tolerant to my English and then I started activating my individual characteristics and began, in some ways, competing with my them.

According to Hawkey (1982), (Tucker et al 1976), (Chastain 1975), (Gardner et al 1979)

In their discussion on learner factors, they describe some factors that influence in language learning, they are `` General factors are divided into those that are modifiable, that is, are likely to change during the course of SLA), as they claim, factors such as motivation, and those factors that are unmodifiable, that is, do not change in strength or nature as SLA takes place), such as aptitude. As they follow in their discussion, they point out that personal and general factors have social, cognitive and affective relationship between the learner and concern the relationship between the learner and native speakers of the L2 and also between the learner and other speakers of his own language. As to me the social aspect did not influence negatively in my learning as it would be expected to, however, my  cognitive, affective and willingness to learner overcame all the possible negative factors influencing my interlanguage continuum. After my third year studying English I could socialise, participate in group dynamics and thanks to my learning techniques I started outpacing my colleagues. As to the factor age, I am quite sure that one of the  aspects that I was  mostly negatively influenced on was the aspect of pronunciation. Although  Oyama claims that  success in SLA appears to be strongly related to the age when SLA is commenced and this is particularly the case where pronunciation is concerned, I  did not  fossilised for a long time, I used be extremely careful when it came to phonology, I would transcribe the phonetic symbols even thought I could not make head or tail of what they meant to be. According to the critical period hypothesis stated by Penfield and Roberts (1959), that claim that the optimum age for language acquisition falls  within the first ten years of life. Period in which the brain retains plasticity and that  the neurological capacity to understand and produce language is easier, did not totally, as I see it, applied to my experience as a language learner who had the first classroom contact by the age of 25.

When I began interacting more with my colleagues I started helping them with grammar, vocabulary and as far as assignment were concerned I used to mine as well as theirs. I did not care very much about that as long as I was learning. When my colleagues began to realise how good I was becoming they started coming to me  for advice, I would suggest good Grammar books, cassettes and supplementary materials that I was interested in running of copies, by then I would copy their materials, study while they would keep them in their bookcases.

In my fourth semester in college I was helping my colleague prepare for the oral tests as well as written tests. I remember that I would set up a day before or after class and I would ``teach them the Present Perfect by making contrastive analyses to Portuguese, I used to give them long lists of exercises so as I could correct later on.

In my fifth semester in college I had a copy of three good grammar books, cassettes and a Phonetic Book which I had the pleasure to read  at least three times during a period of two years. As I had started having an insight into phonology , I began to make phonetic transcription and this helped me to speed up my pronunciation learning.

As I used to go to college in the morning and work in the afternoon and early evening, the only time I had to dedicate to my studies was on Sundays, holiday and in the buses and bus stops. I had never missed a second of my life, whenever I had to take a bus, I would carry my books along with me, sometimes I even slept over my books on the bus, but I was there, firmly , highly motivated to carry on.

In my fifth semester I took a test for monitor and passed with flying colours, since then I started being looked up to by my friends.  I worked at the department for one and a half year and my teacher who had  looked down on me apologised to me congratulating me for my achievements.

I think that although I had a really hard time  learning my second language, there many good aspect to take into consideration.

Although my naive teacher tried to de-motivate I  was not disappointed and according to the ´´negative´´  input she gave me, if it had not been for my `Acquisition Device` , motivation, that was deeply active.  I had surely drop out in my  very first semester. Fortunately, I was sure that I was endowed to acquire target language at any cost in my life, my innate capacity, willingness were active all the time and that would only be a question of time and exposure to the target language my mostly deep reward was to come  to come to at  end of that tunnel   I had to learn the language. I graduated in 1994 and I was awarded a prize for being the best student in that department for over four years.

Two years after graduating from college I carried on studying by myself and I could pass   TOEFL and one year later First Certificate.

Nowadays, I am trying to carry on my studies as again, I am sure that it is not going to be easy because I do not have a spare time to prepare myself as I should do so. The only time I have to study at the moment is on Sundays and at weekdays, after midnight. I am sure that I am going to succeed once more, this time with more responsibility and willingness.