Reflective Essay  Regarding Course ENG 346 Aspects of the English Language

 

I am glad to have had the opportunity of participating in this class in the course of an exchange program between the Pedagogic College Ludwigsburg, Germany, and UNC at Pembroke, North Carolina.       This course has supported my learning of and my learning about the English language. Various factors contributed to the improvement of my grammar skills and to the extension of my English lexicon: Writing essays and research papers challenged me in dealing with the written form of a for me foreign language. I learned more about applying the correct grammar and the project widened my range of active and receptive vocabulary. I also learned a lot from listening to and participating in lectures, discussions, and presentations in class. Also reading Chrystal’s Encyclopedia of the English language which I thought of as a very appropriate book for this course helped me to improve my knowledge of and about the English language.      Since I have had some insight into aspects of the German and English language previous to this course, it offered a very good review on Syntax, Morphology, Phonetics and Phonology for me. Several aspects of the English language, however, were completely new to me. I found it very interesting to learn about the history of the English language and it motivated me to do some future research about the history of my mother tongue. The different variations and the linked question of identity is a present-day issue that provokes controversial opinions. As a teacher to be I see it as important to be aware of these differences in order to be able to coping with them in a proper ways. In the German language, too, such differences of regional and personal variation exist. Just like with English the variation one speaks is often (unjustly) linked to the person’s socio-economic status and to his or her intelligence.      In addition to that I gained knowledge about the different aspects of language acquisition and the importance of teaching phonics. From 2002 on German schools will include English into the curriculum for grades one through four in primary schools. The insight into the process of language acquisition will help me to develop appropriate methods of teaching a second language to German students.      It was not only fun but also very rewarding to work on the online portfolio project. I have never worked with computers that way before and saw it as a challenge to accomplish the task. The topic I worked on was stuttering. I hardly knew anything about this phenomenon which is why I was particularly interested in doing research in this field. I did not know that there was neither a definite cause nor a definite remedy to this fluency problem. Since I will be a teacher in primary schools I am likely to having to interact with at least one child or parent who stutters. The study of this theme will therefore enable me to understand and interact appropriately with people who stutter. Especially with children, who might be in an instable stage of fluency development, it is very important to support them in the right way.      My overall impression of this course is positive. It reinforced my critical thinking about and my awareness of language, a fascinating instrument that we too often take for granted.