I began learning my second language when I was 5 years old and enrolled into kindergarten. It was my first exposure to the English language both spoken and written. There was little effort required to learn English because I was surrounded by students and teachers conversing in English, English music, and English cartoons/tv shows. However, once I got completely immersed in English, I forgot how to speak Korean, my first language, because I wasn’t practicing or exposed to it enough.
I never attempted to relearn Korean but eventually tried learning other languages. I realized how hard learning a language was when I took my first Spanish class in high school. I found it difficult for the grammar rules and conjugations to stick in my head just by looking at the charts that were provided. I disliked how unfamiliar the words looked despite being written in letters from the familiar alphabet. I further disliked learning ancient Greek (another high school class) because the unfamiliar letters made me feel like I was being left out in a secret conversation written in undecipherable code. When we had to read Greek text, I often stared at the words until my eyes lost focus because I couldn’t seem to make sense of anything.
Both this experience and the survey about learning styles told me that I was not a visual learner, but an auditory learner. I only really started to catch on to Spanish when I took my first AP class and the teacher didn’t allow us to use English at all. Since I was constantly hearing and speaking in Spanish, I became used to composing full sentences and understanding others. I found catchy songs like the Spanish conjugations songs to be especially helpful in learning the flow of Spanish sentences, and the greek alphabet song helped me match the sound to the symbol. Once I continued to practice hearing and speaking the languages, I really enjoyed going to class to learn more in-depth concepts and reach a conversational level.
Even though I didn’t continue to take those classes, I am still able to speak, read, and understand some Spanish and ancient Greek at a basic level. I am planning on learning Korean through the SDLC 110 course so I am hoping that when I learn Korean through the course, I will practice enough to not forget it once the semester ends. The multiple intelligences survey revealed my top three intelligences are social, self, and language. According to these, activities such as reading aloud, listening to tapes, engaging in interviews, and reflecting on learning suit my learning styles. I can incorporate these into my future language learning by reading Korean texts aloud, listening to Korean dialogue, having question-and-answer interviews with a native speaker in Korean, and reflecting on the day's work by keeping a daily reflection journal. Since I’ve never tried the interview and journal activities, I think they will further expand my language learning capabilities and allow me to explore more interesting and fun ways to learn.
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