first language learning experience

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stephen
Posts: 324
Joined: Wed 19 Jul, 2017 5:17 am

first language learning experience

Post by stephen » Tue 12 Mar, 2019 6:55 am

I first learned a foreign language in 1976 while living in Thailand as a primary school aged child. I learned the language by full immersion in both the language and culture of the country as it was then.

I rememeber that we were given some classes at the International School Bangkok by reciting some words and learning the alphabet, which was on a poster on the wall. The only thing I remember about the classes was that they were boring, and that the alphabet was squiggly. For real learning, I remember that when we first arrived in the country people didn't speak clearly. Their voices sounded distant or mumbled. Slowly, though, over the months, Anang the gatekeeper and his wife and children, and the landlady's son began to speak clearly. Our maid, Shaluway used to beat and pinch my brothers and I when our parents were out, and to scream at us in Thai to make us behave. Presumably she was treating us the way that Thai people of that time treated (their) children. So far as others were understanding the kearning process, Anang and Shaluway just kept speaking as if to normal people, but the landlady's son realised we didn't understand like ther people, and used to repeat things that didn't make any more sense the second time he said them than the first. After a few months, I was able to get the basic things like water from the gate keeper, meat and vegetable from the open market and to bargain the prices of our taxi trips (as was the custom in those days). I was not aware at that time that the language we were learning in class and the language that people were speaking at home and in the street was one and the same. I also remember missing the sounds of Bangkok and its language after moving back to (monocultural) country NSW.

The support I was given was that the landlord's son repeated things in Thai and used other ways (in Thai) to explain what he wanted to say. He let me and my brother work with him in hand painting the plaster heads of his King as he explained about his job. I think that was useful because after some months I could speak the language too, but I don't know how it was useful. The members of the local community in that place and at that time, who freely spoke to us as they spoke to each other was very supportive too. We were given the opportunity to develop and fully participate in the day to day life that we al lived.

I'm not too sure how support could have been better. I presume that had my parents put me into a local school, rather than the international school. In that way, I suppose I would have learned faster.

The major tends and themes of the articles seem to be about the politicisation of language learning. Education requires funding, and funding is prerogative of governments of the day. The traditional major European languages (of colonisation), with the notable exceptions of Spanish, Russian and Portuguese were the original foreign languages. Later, with migration and multiculturalism, the agenda for community languages was pushed for a while. More recently, Asian languages have been fashionable as a means to foster trade with Asian countries.

As a would be teacher of Modern Greek, I feel that I might have made an unwise choice of languages. I am a non-native, non-background speaker of a community language. That is problematic because potential students maybe better than me at communicating in the language. My knowledge of grammar, history and literature will be better than theirs, though. Another cause for regret is that community languages are no longer in fashion. Besides that, recent immigrations and refugee settlements are from Asia and the Middle East, so the languages of those laanguages are the new ones that need to be taught or maintained so as to foster cohesion within those communities and between the generations of migrants and their grandchildren. Not mentioned in these readings, but as stipulated in the Code of Conduct for employees of the NSW Department of Education, meeting with students or befriending their families is prohibited - for a non-native speaker of a community language that places a barrier on the most obvious way in which I could be involved in that sizeable but small migrant community. From an employment point of view, seeing as the traditional European languages still have the greatest representation in the HSC, it would probably have been better for me to have learned one of those.

Within the national and international language ecologies that I am most likely to be involved in, I see myself as probably needing to do a second year of German or Chinese to be able to improve my employment prospects. The era of community languages is over - there is unlikely to be a resurgence of support for a new wave of Community languages, given the tightening of boarders, etc of the past 10 years.

In this unit, I hope to gain an appreciation of the professional expectations that will be made of me as a language teacher, I hope to gain insight into both how and what I am expected to teach. I hope to gain skills that while initially applied to Modern Greek, will be transferable to other languages as expediency and opportunity arise.

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