University Language Acquisition Experience: A Personal Essay

This essay provides a detailed account of a student's personal journey of English language acquisition. The author reflects on their early exposure to language through Arabic storybooks and the influence of bilingual parents and diverse neighbors. The essay explores the author's experiences in elementary and middle school, highlighting the role of teachers, classmates, and literature in developing their English skills. It discusses the author's passion for English as a foreign language, their decision to become a teacher, and the importance of incorporating a cognitive approach to language learning. The essay also touches upon the impact of watching English movies and listening to music, the influence of multiculturalism, and the support received from family and teachers. Finally, the author reflects on the rewarding nature of their language learning journey and expresses gratitude for the experiences that have shaped them.

Running head : LANGUAGE ACQUISITION EXPERIENCE
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION EXPERIENCE
Name of the Student :
Name of the University :
Author Note :

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LANGUAGE ACQUISITION EXPERIENCE
As a child, my parents emphasized more on vocabulary and diction rather than just
mathematics and science. I started reading Arabic story books and comics at a young age. Being
a curious child, I was intrigued by sounds of different words and languages that were not native
to my own country. My grandparents were monolingual (Piper,2018), as they were not exposed
to the outside world. On the other hand, both of my parents are bilingual (Ovando et al.,2018).
We have neighbors from different countries like the U.S., U.K., Turkey, Jordan, India, Pakistan
and many more. English was the lingua franca needed for us to communicate with people from
different ethnicity. In this essay I will discuss about my experiences of taking up English as a
second language.
In elementary school, we were taught simple words of various places. These faraway
lands attracted me as a child and I dreamt of visiting these foreign lands someday. I wanted to
know what did the people of these lands wear, what did they eat, in what language did they speak
in and how did they look like. One day, my mother told me that if I wanted to visit these
beautiful destinations then I have to learn their language, which was English. That is how second
language acquisition (Rivers,2018) started. In middle school, I remember our teacher teaching
us universal grammar and spellings. Most of my friends belonged to the linguistic minority
community and conversing with them in English helped me develop my language skills and
pronunciation (May,2013). My love for English as a foreign language developed in middle
school. I can recollect my father buying me second hand literature classic novels once a month
so that I can develop my proficiency better. The first ever classic that I read was Oliver Twist by
Charles Dickens. From then onwards there was no looking back. After that I read Mark Twain,
Lewis Carol, Roald Dahl, James Joyce, Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Virginia
Wolf and many other prominent writers, poets and novelists. For me it was a discovery of a new

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LANGUAGE ACQUISITION EXPERIENCE
world and a new way to look at life. Reading was encouraged by both of my parents and it has
changed my perspective towards many things.
It is after graduation that I decided to become a teacher. I was passionate about teaching
English as a foreign language. My parents were not convinced with my preference of
undertaking foreign language teaching (Savignon,2018) as a career option. As a child, I
learned that having grammatical knowledge is very important. From the viewpoint of a teacher, I
think incorporating a cognitive approach (Neisser, 2014) in teaching any foreign language is
necessary. This helps in remembering things more vividly. Nevertheless, there are instructions in
grammar rules and also memorization provided in the audio-lingual method (Crawford,2004).
When I was in middle school, we were asked to converse fluently in English in class and inside
the school premises. We had grades allocated for linguistic performance (Verspoor et
all.,2011). In the end of each academic year, we used to compare our grades with one another
and foretell who would get a visa to the U.S. first.
Choosing to learn a foreign language helped me gain confidence and self-esteem. It
helped me in my elocution contests, creative writing competitions and spelling tests. As stated in
Crawford, I paid attention to what I had to say and write before taking part in any competition
(Crawford,2004). It also helped me gain insight on the different cultures in and around the world.
My CLAP skills also matured during this period (Crawford, 2004). While I was in college, I
started watching English movies and movies of different languages with subtitles. This helped in
developing my phonetics and vocabulary. Sometimes I used to listen to music of different
countries and regions. Learning a foreign language gave me an understanding of the heritage and
cultural background of my friends and colleagues. It has helped me in blending in with everyone
and have mutual respect for their festivals, rituals and customs. I have been able to accept multi-

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culturalism and the diversity it has. I have realized that no matter how diverse we are in terms of
race, ethnicity, culture, language and other aspects , we all have the same emotion of love and
respect.
Learning a new language and being passionate about it would not have been possible if
my parents had not supported me. The credit also goes to my teachers from middle school and
high school who made me accustomed to the world of literature and dialect. It would not have
been possible without them to gain profound vernacular knowledge. Most importantly, I am
grateful to my grandmother for telling me bedtime stories of Arabian kings and folktales. It is
because of her that my inquisitiveness took flight. The quest to know beyond what is already
known and see beyond what is already visible made me curious about different languages,
people and places. This journey has been rewarding so far and I hope it keeps on enriching me
with new experiences. The thought of my grandmother acquiring the expertise of a foreign
language often intrigues me. Maybe she would have done things differently and her outlook
towards life would have changed. As for me, reading, writing and conversing have helped me in
becoming the person that I am today.

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LANGUAGE ACQUISITION EXPERIENCE
References
Crawford, J. (2004). Educating English learners: Language diversity in the classroom.
Bilingual Education Serv.
May, S. (2013). Language and minority rights: Ethnicity, nationalism and the politics of
language. Routledge.
Neisser, U. (2014). Cognitive psychology: Classic edition. Psychology Press.
Ovando, C. J., & Combs, M. C. (2018). Bilingual and ESL classrooms: Teaching in
multicultural contexts. Rowman & Littlefield.
Piper, T. (1998). Language and learning: The home and school years. Merrill Prentice-
Hall, Inc., Order Processing, PO Box 11071, Des Moines, IA 50336-1071.
Rivers, W. M. (2018). Teaching foreign-language skills. University of Chicago Press.
Savignon, S. J. (2018). Communicative competence. The TESOL Encyclopedia of
English Language Teaching, 1-7.
Verspoor, M. H., de Bot, K., & van Rein, E. (2011). English as a foreign
language. English in Europe Today, 147.