KOMENASHIANS: MAKING A DIFFERENCE: MAR'S LANGUAGE LEARNING EXPERIENCES

LANGUAGE BIOGRAPHY

MY LANGUAGE LEARNING AIMS

My main linguistic aims when learning English are of varied nature. Since my future prospect is to become an English teacher, I would like to be fluent in it and have a native-like command of it in order to guarantee my students a good quality in the input they are receiving. However, apart from that, one of my main aims when learning languages is broaden my knowledge of other cultures, to develop the ability to understand new systems of languages and to be able to communicate with people from other parts of the world.

MY LANGUAGE LEARNING HISTORY

Since I was born, I have been in contact with two languages, Spanish and Catalan, which are my mother tongues.

Regarding my experience with foreign languages, I started learning English at school, from 1^st Primaria to 2^nd of Bachillerato. In addition, from the very beginning of secondary education I took up French and got the A2 certificate of both languages in 4^th of ESO in my former high school. Due to my good results and my interest in foreign languages, I continued to study both of them, French at the Escuela Oficial de Idiomas and English turned out to be the subject knowledge of my degree. I also tried to study Chinese as a minor to my degree, but the truth is that I quitted because I did not enjoy it at all.

In French, I got a B1 certificate and I have one year left to get a B2, whereas I have a higher level of English, a C2.

It would be also worth mentioning that despite the fact that Catalan is my mother tongue, I studied for obtaining the C2 level and the “Capacitació”, certificates required to work in public institutions in our region.

MY MOST SIGNIFICANT LINGUISTIC AND INTERCULTURAL EXPERIENCES

Throughout my life, I have had several linguistic and intercultural experiences. I would like to highlight two of them: a three-weeks stay in a host family in St. Albans (England) and my Erasmus year. Both of them gave me a real context in which I could use English and allowed me to meet people from different countries. We used English as a means of communicating because none of us knew the mother tongues of the others, so it was a very good opportunity to use it in daily life and for a real purpose.

MY CURRENT LANGUAGE LEARNING PRIORITIES

One of my main learning priorities regarding English has to do with learning the daily life usage of the language, idiomatic expressions and improving my listening and speaking skills in order to fully understand the language. In French, however, I would like to become a B2 + or C1 in order to be able to teach my future students in that language when I travel to England to do the PGCE in Modern Foreign Languages Spanish & French.