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Reflective Blog 2

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 ESL: My learning and Teaching experiences   June 2, 2023 Here is my experience learning English as a second language. I went to a French Elementary school and high school. Until the age of 13-14, I was not exposed to the English language or barely. I sometimes heard it on the radio, I heard it when traveling, and at school maybe once or twice a week during the ESL classes. On top of that, I was quite reserved as a child and I was too shy to practice the language out loud. I had no willingness to communicate (WTC), and I was very anxious and insecure about making mistakes when practicing(Lightbown & Spada). I do not think my teachers were bad, I just think my identity and motivation blocked me from learning. The only motivation I had was to pass my classes. I was giving minimal effort with the purpose of attaining immediate goals. I had the integrative motivation to simply pass the class(Gardner & Lambert, 1972). However, it's been shown that identities are dynamic(Toohey,
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Reflective Blog 1

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Exploring L1 and L2 Learning with Emphasis on the Impact of Exposure Some aspects that affect the learning process are age and exposure time. Most L2 learners are adults, and L1 learners are babies. It appears that this relates to the amount of exposure to the language. As written by Lightbown and Spada in How languages are learned: “L1 learners spend thousands of hours in contact with the language or languages spoken around them.” The fetus starts to hear during the third trimester. As soon as the baby is born it has already been exposed to the L1. The baby can already make a distinction between their mother’s voice and other people's. They also notice specific phonetic sounds that their L1 possesses. For L2 learners their exposure to the language is much more limited. Young L2 learners seem to be prone to hearing the language more as they might hear it in the classroom, in the playground, or on television. Adult L2 learners usually learn in a classroom a few hours a week and th
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