Senor

Reflections on my experience as a learner of languages and on how that
experience may have influenced my teaching style and practice
Mónica de la Riva de la Rosa
Secondary school teacher
Resumen
En este artículo pretendo hacer una reflexión personal desde mi infancia sobre mi propia adquisición y
aprendizaje de idiomas tomando el castellano como punto de partida y siguiendo con el posteriorestudio y
adquisición de otras lenguas extranjeras. Esta introspección me llevará a analizar hasta qué punto las
experiencias vividas, tanto positivas como negativas, han podido influir en los métodos y estilos de
aprendizaje que imparto en mis clases al día de hoy.
Palabras clave: reflexión, adquisición de lenguas, estilos de aprendizaje, historia de vida
Abstract
The following article isan introspection into my childhood and early youth memories in relation to language
acquisition and learning of foreign languages. This analysis will help me determine to what extent these
experiences, positive and negative ones, may have influenced my teaching methods and style to the present
day.
Key words: reflection, language acquisition, learning styles, teachers´ lives

1. IntroductionWe all have a story behind, this is unquestionable. Personally, I have little doubt that my family and life
experiences have most definitely conditioned who I am and what I am presently dedicating my life to:
teaching.
Whenever I look back to my past, my memories of childhood and other periods of my life reveal a
“linguistic part of me” which has always been latent. Though it is true I canonly recall some scattered events
or situations which took place at specific times, these minor details illustrate aspects related to the acquisition
of my mother tongue, Spanish, or my first contacts or attempts to learn foreign languages. In the next few
lines I will try to give an accurate narration of those recollections which, I believe, may have influenced my
teaching profile as it isnowadays.

2. My family experiences as a child
My very first memory of a language reflection had to do with language awareness and was related to one
specific event: as I was born in Málaga where the local accent is characterized by a strong “z” sound instead
of “s” in the pronunciation of many terms. At an early age I could tell there was a striking contrast between
the manner in which both myparents and the rest of my family, native of the Canary Islands, expressed
themselves and the accent mentioned above. Thus, probably around the age of 4 or 5, I could feel that the
people surrounding me had various accents and used the language differently. When I was in 4º E.G.B. (the
educational system of the time) I remember having trouble with the enunciation of the sounds “s” and “z”, to103
Reflections on my experience as a learner of languages and on how
It may have influenced my teaching style and practice
Mónica de la Riva de la Rosa
Encuentro 19, 2010, ISSN 1989-0796, pp. 103-108

the point of mixing the pronunciation and spelling of culinary and other terms pronounced with an “s” sound
by my Canary Island parents instead of the Castilian “z”. Another experience Ican trace back was the strong
emotional impact I felt on the first occasion my parents sent me to Tenerife to spend the summer there. My
relatives’ accent was so catchy and powerful I picked it up some days after arriving there. Moreover, my
efforts to adapt “my own accent” to theirs was deliberate not to feel ashamed and, most importantly, so that
my family did not call me “goda”, a pejorativeterm for those coming from the peninsula.
My first contact with the English language came through my mother, I must have been about 6 years old
at that time. My mother, who had learnt English in her youth, made an attempt to teach it to my sister and I
using the only book she had at hand, a method for adults called “Essential English”. These classes were not
terribly successful nor lasted...