Second Language Acquisition Thesis Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4500 words

Second Language Acquisition - Thesis Example English is regarded as lingua franca and so notwithstanding your educational and cultural background, you have to obtain a minimum level skill in spoken and written English, if you want to be a global person. â€Å"For better or worse, by choice or force, English has ‘traveled’ to many parts of the world.† (Sharifian 2009) It is the circumstances which led me to become a multi lingual person. Learning English thoroughly and being a language teacher had never been my choice of career. English was not a completely new language for me as my parents knew English very well. I acquired the language in a quite easy and unconscious manner, as I had been learning English from the age of 6. I was born in Malaysia and later on my family transferred to Hong Kong, when I was just one year old. My kindergarten education was in Chinese medium. When we shifted to Hong Kong, my parents sent me to an International school. English then became my first language. The entire atmosphere in my school was utterly cosmopolitan. The students in our international school had come from different parts of the world. The teachers were from UK and they spoke to us in pure English. So we had an exposure to what we call a â€Å"Queen’s English.† I did not have to take much effort while learning English. It was a traditional method of teaching which the teachers used. Apart from that, it would not be difficult for me to grasp English. It was because the entire culture in my school was English. The books prescribed in our curriculum were typical language books, which consisted of innumerable pictures. It was really wonderful to read them and to watch the pictures. We would be having different tables, quizzes, games as our exercises. I was learning English very comfortably and naturally like I learnt my mother tongue. The medium of instruction was English, hence every subject was taught in English itself. Though I have never been a language person, I could speak En glish fluently. I could read English very comfortably. My listening skill developed automatically, as I was hearing English constantly in my school, and later, in the places where I travelled. As long as writing is concerned I was a little bit behind. For me, English had been the source of communication with my peers. I had absolutely no problem in speaking English. The atmosphere in the school was global and multicultural. We had no choice but to communicate in English with each other. I was accompanied by the children from different parts of the world. Among them, some children were from India, Philippines, Korea, and Japan. Some of them were also from United States and England. When we were in school, we used to learn lots of nursery rhymes and Christian rhymes as it was a Christian school. When the teachers would sing the rhymes, we would repeat them. We would follow the same accents. Thus we got acquainted with the accents and pronunciation without any effort. Acquisition of En glish as a foreign language was really not a matter of concern for me. In our school, French was another language for study. To be frank, I used to get bored. I was not good in French. Consequently, I know French very little. English and French actually are the language of same family. But like English I could not be fluent in French. It might be firstly because I was not a language person and secondly because we taught French as other language and it was not our medium of instruc

Human relationship and responsibility to the natural world Essay

Human relationship and responsibility to the natural world - Essay Example The natural world is the world where aspects of life interact in ways that create eco-systems in order to create spaces of survival. As human beings, the natural world should be a responsibility in which nature is preserved and protected. The way in which human beings have behaved, however, is to create the concept of the world as a resource rather than a responsibility to be protected. As stewards of the Earth, human beings should have tended to nature rather than stripping and using up resources many of which cannot easily be replenished. Just like locusts come and strip plant life down to that which is no longer usable, human beings have created a planet that is suffering because of the uses to which it has endured. As stewards of the planet, it is the job of human beings to begin to nourish and enrich the natural world so that much of it can be put back to its natural state. Rather than destroying species and allowing them to disappear for the Earth, the natural environment shoul d be cared for so that it can once again evolve into a beautiful and rich space in which nature thrives and flourishes. Resources for this paper will be works from A Sand County almanac: With essays on conservation by Aldo Leopold, as well as a variety of sources which describes the current human condition. The following paper will discuss the concept of stewardship in order to answer the question about the relationship of human kind as it has a responsibility to the natural world.... In order to discuss this topic, the first question that must be examined is how the human cultures have continued to evolve away from the natural environment and use it as a place to strip natural resources. Modernity means taking what is natural and using it as a resource rather than living within it as a part of its ecosystem. When human beings involve themselves with nature, it comes in the form of ‘going’ to it. The terms ‘going fishing’ or ‘going skiing’ suggest that a human is going to a place where they can begin to enjoy the abundance of nature. Modern human beings are not involved in nature in the way that a fox or a rabbit would be involved. They are not hunted, nor do they hunt for their food. They live in packaged environments that deny nature as they sit in their air-conditioned offices and shop in the chilled regions of the frozen food aisle. Industrialization was the capstone of the divorce from nature as needs became packaged so that inconvenience and direct work was supplanted for making money to pay for the industrialized nature of survival. Buying an apple takes more than plucking it from a tree just as making a bed is no longer about finding the right leaves and branches in which to lay. It could be said humans have grown lazy because they are no longer required to run from tigers or chase down buffalo. It is the convenience of modern life that has taken us from lean, strong fighters to artificial leanness when it is chosen to be manufactured or soft bellied beings that wait for the doorbell to ring in order to eat pizza. Modern humanity is about packaging what nature would otherwise provide