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

LANGUAGE BIOGRAPHY

MY LANGUAGE LEARNING AIMS

Taking into account that I want to be an English teacher my language learning aims are quite simple. I want to be a competent user of this language because I want to teach it and in order to do so you need to be proficient.

However, I have to say that when I started learning English my main aim was to be able to contact people from all over the world, learn about other cultures and open up my mind.

MY LANGUAGE LEARNING HISTORY

I started learning English when I was 3 years old. At that time it was not compulsory to study English at school until students were in primary. For this reason, my parents decided to write down my name in a language school as they considered that learning English from an early age would be beneficial for me. Then, when I was in 4^thPrimary (I'm not really sure about the school year) I started learning this language at school too. However, I continued in the language school in order to reinforce my English and I have to say that nowadays I am still there because I want to pass my CPE exam.

Apart from that I also studied Valencian at school and last month I finished my “capacitació” course. Furthermore, when I was in high school I got my C1 certificate.

In high school I also studied French and at university I studied Italian but I have to say that I wasn't so interested in learning those languages and I just remember a few words of them.

MY MOST SIGNIFICANT LINGUISTIC AND INTERCULTURAL EXPERIENCES

I have to say that linguistic and intercultural experiences have had a strong influence on my language command. When I was a teenager I loved playing computer games and I found really interesting the fact that English was a mean to contact people from other countries. That was the first time I saw English in a real context and from that moment onwards I started being more interested in learning that language. Then, I went on a trip to London and my interest in that language increased too.

Finally, in 2015 I did an Erasmus and it was a fantastic experience. I was able to use this language in my everyday life, make international friends and improve my English level.

When talking about Valencian I would say that the good thing about this language is that we are constantly in contact with it. It was when I started going to university that I met valencian speakers and I started using this language more often. My father's family is from Cuenca and my mother's from Teruel and as a consequence of that I don't have the opportunity to practise it at home but as I have already mention I use it in order to talk with some of my university friends.

Regarding Italian and French I have had a similar experience. Even though I have the A2 French Certificate I just remember a few words from that language and the same happens with my Italian. I would say that it happens because when I studied those languages I was not able to use them in real contexts and therefore I was not motivated.

MY CURRENT LANGUAGE PRIORITIES

If we take a look to my English self-assessment checklist (C2 level) we can see my learning priorities. One of my main priorities is to learn more colloquial vocabulary and idiomatic expressions in order to fully understand everyday English and be able to use them in conversation.

Apart from that I would also like to enrich my vocabulary and use more complex words and expressions and improve my pronunciation.