Teach English in Bianhe Zhen - Zibo Shi

Foreign language experience Challenges I face in learning a new language Learning a new language is a life time process and has a lot of challenges that come with it. These challenges must be overcome into order to achieve the goal of finally being fluent at the language. This digest will highlight some of these challenges and suggest possible solutions. This write up is mainly based on personal experience. From a tender age of about 6 years I started learning English language as my first foreign language to learn. I have been learning English language since then. Currently I am learning Japanese as well. The main challenges that I faced in learning these two languages have helped me understand learning a new language deeply and have inspired me to start teaching English language to those who wish to learn it. The first challenge I noted is the culture gap. Any language is tied to the culture of the native speakers. I realized this when I tried to translate some expressions from English and Japanese to my local language and could not find a suitable word. A good example is cheers. This word is tied to a culture of raising glasses with wine or drink in them and bringing them together in the air as a sign of unity during celebrations. This is an English culture. It is also part of the Japanese culture and they call it kampai. This culture is a borrowed culture in Zimbabwe my home country. We do not have a word that directly translates to the word cheers since the culture is not there in our country. This taught me that to learn a language well there is need to be interested in the culture of the native speakers of that language. There are language structures that are directly linked to the culture. While learning a language it is best to be in the country of the native speakers but if it is not possible then one should try interaction through internet or other means of communication. The other challenge is the need for interaction with the native or fluent speakers. Learning a language only in the classroom and never getting time to use it in daily life settings will slow down the learning process. I noticed that even listening to people speaking the language one is learning has a lot of advantages in improving ones’ skills. The early moments of learning the language pose a lot of challenge because one wants to interact but they have little vocabulary and can barely understand a single sentence. This is where the learner needs to focus more on listening and deducing meaning from situations. Deducing meaning from situations is sometimes very difficult and in some cases impossible but its good at the early stages as a motivator of listening. At times there are no people to interact with. This usually happens when one is learning a language from a location far from its native or fluent speakers. In such cases internet comes in handy. One can join social media platforms or other language learning platforms such as Hello language learning platform. Interaction enables practice of new language structures that have been learnt and also helps in keeping them in ones memory for long. For this reason interaction is inevitable. The effect of mother tongue in pronunciation is also another challenge I noted. There are sounds that may be present in the new language but are not there in one‘s mother tongue or native language. These pose a challenge. For some of them one has to take time learning how to twist the tongue in order to produce the sound. More listening and more speaking practice will help with this. Interaction is the key also to overcoming this challenge. You tube can also be used to learn various pronunciation skills of various languages. It is important to try and avoid accents that cause one to sound as if they are speaking a different language from the one they intend to speak. This comes with a lot of practice and depends mainly on the proper pronunciation of each word. The challenges highlighted above seem to be critical in learning a new language. Considering ways of overcoming them at the onset of learning a new language can come in handy in learning the language faster and with fewer hassles. Interaction with the native speakers has been noted as a solution to most challenges as the challenges are mainly linked to lack of knowledge and experience of the culture of the native speakers. The internet has also been seen as handy in this endeavor in cases where one is far from the natives.