Reflections on an Online Article

Online article:

http://www.englisharticles.info/2010/06/17/language-acquisition-vs-foreign-language-learning/

This article talks about learning language, but not focuses on learning a “new” language. People do not found mother tongue also is a language which we have to learn. People think the word “learn” means to acquire or a new thing that people who do not understand before; however, when we born in the world, we start to “learn.” I chose other language for my double major when I was sophomore. I found something important when studying: environment and courage.

Environment is important for people who want to learn language. When someone who are in foreign country, environment make him or her language skill improve faster and faster. My first language is Chinese. Of course, English is my foreign language. When I was young, I could not understand what my parents talk about; they use Taiwanese in their conversation. In that time, Taiwanese was my foreign language although I am a Taiwanese. After I entered elementary school, my brother started to talk in Taiwanese. Because of the reason, I started to learn Taiwanese. I paid attention to my parents’ dialogues. With time I tried to talk in Taiwanese with my parents. Usually my pronunciation was not correct, my parent would rectify it.

Courage is one of the important things to learn foreign language. People, particularly Chinese, are afraid of talking to a native speaker of other foreign language. We are afraid to making mistake and to be embarrassed. Yet, mustering up his or her courage is one way to improve skill of language. Until I enter English department, I was also afraid to talk to foreign. Making a sentence and check the grammar was the way what I talked to foreign teacher when I was freshman. Now my conversation skill is better because teacher train us embolden saying. I say what I want to say without making sentence and check it.

People not only use language in written and reading, the most using is conversation: speaking and listening. There are many way to make learners perfect his or her language learning. Environment and courage are two of the important things to learning and improving language skill I think.

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