Language Acquisition (Failure) Essay Rough Draft

My name is Eric Li. Im not telling you this because I think you give a damn, because I wouldnt, but the key thing to notice there is my last name, Li. If youre not familiar with Chinese last names, wellthere you go. You just learned one! Congratulations! You just learned information that is most likely totally useless! Woo. Anyway, Id like to say this essay is about how I first learned Chinese, a heartwarming story where I somehow learned it on my own through a Chinese Superman comic book, but the truth is I suck like a deflating balloon at Chinese. So instead, this essay is going to be about why I failed to learn Chinese, providing my perspective of failure on language acquisition instead of the perspective of success. And when I say I fail at Chinese, no, I dont mean I fail at being my own race. My skin isnt green or anything, although that would be cool. This is a language essay not a race essay people. Now lets get started. -didnt learn from an early age The biggest reason why I believe I failed to learn Chinese is because I didnt learn it from an early age. Even though Im of Chinese descent, I was born in Newfoundland, Canada. Because of this, my native language is actually English, not Chinese. In psychology, theres a theory that theres an optimal age for language acquisition. However, by the time I started Chinese school at the age of six, my optimal period for language acquisition may have already passed. Although even in that optimal period of language acquisition, my mom did tells me that I had trouble with the alphabet, so its not like there was any indication that I was a language prodigy to begin with. By the time I was going to Chinese school every Saturday, I was already too integrated with English, and Chinese seemed too difficult. Unlike English, every word in Chinese has its own symbol and needs to be pronounced in a certain way. Some words in Chinese sound exactly the same to the un-experienced ear, but in fact, have completely different meanings. The words water () and sleep () are both pronounced with the exact same syllable

and are only differentiated by their tone. The difficulty of the language combined with the late start in learning it made it difficult for me to understand the lessons without a lot of effort. Looking back on Chinese school, I always felt like Chinese came so much more easily to other students than it did for me. There was one period of time where my mom really pushed me hard to learn Chinese. Every Saturday at the beginning of class there would be a quiz, and my mom would make note cards for me with Chinese characters on the back of the card and the English translations of those characters at the front. The practice worked for a couple weeks, but I gave up one week when even after practicing so much, I couldnt remember a Chinese character in a quiz while all my other classmates seemed to have easily finished. It felt like even if I practiced harder than my classmates I would still do worse. I know now that if I continued to practice that diligently I probably would have eventually caught up with my classmates, but back then it was extremely discouraging because I was working harder and yet not getting the same results. There was definitely responsibility on my part for failing to learn Chinese. But its also true that setbacks like those can deter a child from learning. Not necessary to learn, as a result was not motivated In both the United States and Canada, English is used far more than Chinese. As a result, my motivation for learning Chinese was low because learning it wasnt a necessity. The importance of having language learning a necessity in the language learning process is exemplified by the fact that during the 2 times I visited China my Chinese improved dramatically, to the point where I could actually speak (kind of) with others. Because I was unable to speak English as my native language in China, I felt compelled to learn Chinese while I was there, rapidly improving my Chinese. The reversed effect occurred when, as soon as I returned back to the U.S., all that progress seemed to be lost. Maybe I simply forgot it because it didnt matter anymore. My parents noticed too. My parents actually joked, disturbingly seriously, that

they should just send me off to China to live there so I would actually learn Chinese. Honestly, it might have worked, although I wouldnt have been very happy about it. -language barrier become greater as I advanced grade levels As I went to higher and higher grade levels in Chinese, my teachers used English less and less, gradually solidifying the language barrier. Eventually, when my Chinese teachers switched to entirely Chinese during lessons, I could barely or was completely unable to comprehend the lesson. Because of that I mostly just saw Chinese school as that place where I played badminton and met with friends in my class. But there was one time where I had the opportunity to overcome that language barrier by starting from scratch. When my parents encouraged me to take Chinese in middle school, if I had started from the 1st level of Chinese maybe I could have re-learned the basics if I started from scratch. However, that clearly didnt happen or else this essay wouldnt exist. My middle school gave me a test to determine whether I could skip a grade or not. And somehow, someway, for what were probably the most nonsensical reasons ever, I passed. I feel like they didnt even read the test I took and they were just like welluhh, this test is absolutely awful, but he looks Chinese, so lets pass him. Looking back on it, I should have rejected skipping to Chinese level 2 because I missed a real chance to have a fresh start with Chinese. And for some bizarre reason in high school I continued to take Chinese under my parents recommendation, even though what was taught in those classes was above my level of experience. By then, A C grade was actually an accomplishment for me. The language barrier had become a language brick wall. *insert conclusion summarizing previous major points as well as providing insight into why people fail to learn a language*