EDU307 - Developing Language Awareness: Reflection on English Learning

This essay presents a personal reflection on the author's experiences learning English, highlighting the challenges faced due to inadequate early education and a lack of language awareness within their community. It discusses the importance of English proficiency for academic and professional suc...Read More

Running Head: ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING
ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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English language is very important not only for the academic education but also for
communication. This digital era has transcended all the barriers of the culture and religion as
well as language. Cross-countries trades, cross-cultural communication has become very
common now a days. Hence, uniformity in language is very important in order to carry on
international trade communication as well as other cross-national interaction. English is
considered as a uniform language that facilitate cross-national interaction for, business,
political, communication and other purposes. But there are many countries, or many sections
of developed countries where there are lack of knowledge about English language. This study
contains a personal reflection on English learning experiences, doubts and proper teaching
methods. This essay also aims to analyze and comment on two articles related to developing
language awareness through explicit teaching of text structures and sentence level grammar.
According to my personal experience, I can comment that the lack of awareness in the
students and their parents, the faulty course design, text structure, the lack of knowledge of
grammar a on the part of the teachers in the primary level of school learning become
obstacle in the course of English language learning. All these I had experienced during my
school life, which casted upon a bad impact on my English language learning. I am from a
poor and underprivileged community of Australia, where people are not aware of the
importance of learning English language properly. Most of the people of our community have
basic level of education and can carry on earning their livelihood without knowing English
properly. Unfortunately, in my case they applied their misconception about English language
learning and admitted me in a school which lacks effective framework for learning English
language and good English teachers. This weaken the base of my knowledge about English
grammar and sentence structure since my childhood.
The extent to which English language learning is important and relevant to practice
teaching can be realized from my personal experience. I was not able to form correct English

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sentences, and apply the right grammar as well as punctuation. The case was same for most
of the children of our community. But we did not get any assistance from our teachers, as
they were also from our community and lacked the knowledge of English grammar and
sentence structure. The school was not able to take any fruitful steps in this regard, as there
were very few people in our community who had in-depth knowledge of English. Moreover,
such people were not interested in practice teaching. Hence from my experience I realized
that the school should encourage such people to practice teaching English language, so that
the next generation can learn English language properly. A systematic framework should be
designed for practice teaching. This framework should include grammar learning classes and
some English learning games. For example, this framework may include cross-word puzzles,
Quiz based on English grammar, make sentences games so that learning English becomes fun
to the students. The effective framework for practice teaching should also include story-
telling classes, where the students will be told, English short stories and after that they will be
asked to describe, whatever they have learnt from the story.
The extent to which learning English language is important and relevant to student to
be engaged with language can be understood from my personal story. In spite of being a
brilliant student I had to face many obstacles when I wished to leave my homeland to pursue
higher career goals. I always dreamt to study in a renowned university of USA, but the dearth
of engagement with English language and lack of in-depth knowledge of grammar,
vocabulary shattered my dreams. I was not able to clear the entrance exams, which assessed
my knowledge about English language irrespective of my proficiency in the subject which I
wanted to study. This made me realize that learning English language is essential, for
pursuing higher studies. Later I managed to pursue English language training from one of my
friends who lived in the city of Sydney and cracked GRE, but during my study in USA I
suffered from inferiority complexes as my peers can speak English more fluently than me.

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Sometimes Even sometimes they bullied me for my weakness in English language. This
made me realize that learning English language is very important and relevant for students.
This will not only help them to communicate properly but also becomes the symbol of their
social standard.
The article-“The fall and rise of grammar in the Australian English curriculum:
factors in a continuum of change” by Bernard, has focused on the distinct decline in the
school level grammar in Australia during several years. It has also found out the factors
responsible behind this decline. In this context, this article has assumed two hypothesis-
firstly, the lack of understanding on the part of the teachers about the inclusion of English
language in curriculum documents. Secondly, the ineffective content and quality of the
curriculum documents. In order to proof these hypotheses, this article has compared and
contrasted curriculum documents of different decades. The parameters on the basis of which
this analysis has been done are- teacher proficiency, Curriculum documents and change. The
findings exposes that Neither grammar nor other knowledge about language has featured
prominently in the English curriculums of Australia for almost three decades starting from
1950s. The study also revealed that the recent curriculum document designed during late 90s,
has focused on the English language and grammar and suggested some changes to make the
curriculum more effective (Bernard 1999).
The article- “I had to go out and get myself a book on grammar: A study of pre-
service teachers’ knowledge about language. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy,”
by Harper and Rennie throws light on the preparedness of the teachers in case of teaching in
the literary schools. This article has considered the ‘knowledge about language’ an important
factor that measures the efficiency of the teachers in the literary schools. In order to assess
the role of ‘teacher education programs’ to increase the ‘knowledge about language’ this
article has conducted a qualitative study. The aim of this qualitative study was to find out the

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loopholes in the framework to impart the students ‘knowledge about language’ with reference
to the teacher education programs. Another objective of this qualitative study was to make
the students aware that they have to increase their ‘'knowledge about language', if they wish
to pursue teaching careers in future. The findings revealed the lack of depth in the school
pedagogy as well as the teacher education programs lacks in proper structure to provide the
teachers 'knowledge about language' and recommended the a scientific and systematic
approach to deal with such problems (Harper and Rennie 2009).
Questions you still have about teaching and learning are related to the initiative of
some of the community schools, their teachers as well as Australian government to assess the
implementation of an effective framework for English language learning.
Aspects of the English language that puzzles me are interruption in the fluency of
speaking English when I am sad or emotionally disturbed.
In the conclusion, it can be said that, the scenario in most of the literary schools have
not been changed much. Still they follow curriculum which has a little focus on English
language. The collaborative efforts by Australian government and literary schools are
required to overcome this problem.

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References
Bernard, N. (1999). The fall and rise of grammar in the Australian English curriculum:
factors in a continuum of change. La Trobe papers in Linguistics 10-80
Harper, H. & Rennie, J. (2009.) I had to go out and get myself a book on grammar: A study
of pre-service teachers’ knowledge about language. Australian Journal of Language and
Literacy, 32(1), 22-37-80