Learning and teaching a second language

LEARNING AND TEACHING A SECOND LANGUAGE

Since many time ago, it was thought that to learn and teach English was useless, however, at present, this idea has changed a lot. Personally, I think thatthe acquisition and training of this language can be something positive and fruitful in our education since the future of people goes through cultural interaction and the need to master otherlanguages in order to increase opportunities and quality of life. I know that learning a language is not an easy task, I mean, it implies a complex process that each one of us can experiment in a differentway. In this way, I agree with the people who say that the most difficult to learn English is listening and writing, it is really a big challenge. First of all, because naturally I am not in a nativereal context, most specifically, with people who speak all the time English, and second because you have to produce words by yourself without using the mother tongue. Therefore, I consider that the bestways to get better and to practice this language are for example, talk this foreign language with our friends, creating in this way an English corner club and listen a tape over and over again,imitating the stress and intonation, and all of this with the aim of making perfect my pronunciation and listening. Nevertheless, at the beginning it is so difficult due to the fact that the people aroundus do not have the enough knowledge of this tongue unless they study it, besides this, we cannot understand those tapes very well since we are not used to. On the other hand, teaching is also atedious work because as it implies to motivate others to learn and to help each one of them, bearing in mind their individual ways to learn. Thus, students can be difficult to satisfy; even some of them canfeel frustrated when seeing their learning process standstill. Thus, a teacher has to look for different ways to get the interest of students, using new strategies such as pictures or music, etc....