Language Acquisition Autobiography

Tiffani Knox

Los Angeles Pacific University

ENGL 420 Principle of Language

Lesley Gonzalez

March 22, 2021

 Language acquisition and development is an essential part of each of our lives and

learning. Growing up my parents used multiple ways of making sure my language development

was there and growing. They made this a priority to both my siblings and myself, but for myself,

I had some setbacks no matter how much they tried to help me. I have worked hard to try to

overcome those obstacles in order to further my career in the educational field. Seeing kids

around me and in my career benefit from their parents taking those extra fifteen minutes to read

to them, has shown just how important early language exposure is.

Growing up from as far back as I can remember, my parents made it a priority to

constantly ask us questions that we had to respond to, would read us books, and play learning

games with us. My mom was an elementary school teacher, which meant for us that in our

everyday agenda, we either had to have a book read to us or when we got older we had to read it

ourselves. I remember thinking to myself and even stating it to my brother, “This is dumb. Why

can we not just go play outside?” It never meant anything to me until my nephew was born and I

was helping raise him with my sister. Even then I did not fully understand why it was such a big

deal, until I started working with elementary children. You can always tell which parents took

their extra time to even just read a few books a week to their kids and talk to them. My parents

spent countless amounts of hours reading to us, singing to us, and letting us play little alphabet

card games, and now I can see why.

When I was in middle school and high school, my mom still made us read everyday. I

would still get so upset when she would make us read, but not because I did not want to, it was

because it was hard for me. I have always done fairly well in school. A’s and B’s through

everything and very very rare would I get a C, but when I did, it was usually in my English

classes. My mom would hound me and hound me and tell me I was not doing my reading and
that is why I was getting a C, but really it was because my comprehension level was low. I had

finally told my mom that I do not understand a lot of the things they were saying in the books.

My mom had contacted my teacher and talked to her about my level. They both agreed to lower

my A.R. level on my books and work one on one with me to help get it higher. I took a huge

advantage from this once my comprehension level went up, but it took a few years. I went from

hating anything to do with my EEnglish classes, to loving them once I got into college. Although

comprehending some things is still a little hard, for the most part, I have improved tremendously.

Not only did this make me feel better about myself, but it also made me want to become a

teacher. I worked and still do work hard in trying to improve my skills to be able to help younger

kids who are struggling just like I did. About five years ago when I turned eighteen, I started

working with kids in comprehension and reading. I see how frustrated some of them get from not

being able to understand some of the things in our books or our questions. This is what keeps

pushing me everyday to continue helping them. Whether or not their parents took the time to talk

to them and read to them, there are still those like myself, who struggle.

Early language exposure is something that may be able to help make us, or can break us.

Janet Castrejón states in Why early exposure to language is so important, “Most experts agree

that there is a window of opportunity when the brain is most efficient at learning languages.”

Many researchers and books have stated that kids younger than seven years of age have a higher

advantage of learning languages. Castrejón also stated, “Everyone knows that children learn

languages much more quickly and efficiently than we adults do. Mere exposure is enough for a

child to soak up a new language while we adults struggle in language classes trying to apply

grammar rules as if they were algebra formulas.” This can apply to learning our first language

and our second language. It is much easier to teach them younger rather than older. I personally
believe that if you read to them often and play fun reading games with them, they will grow up to

enjoy reading and ELA. For example, when we were all helping raise my nephew, we read to

him several times a time. One time just for fun and another time when we were putting him to

bed. He is now thirteen years old and absolutely loves to read and has always had the highest

grade in his English classes. This has shown us that he has strong feelings in his language

acquisition because of what we all did. Unlike him, I myself had a very hard feeling for reading

because of my delay in comprehension. Once I was able to get past that, I learned to love the

field of language and how much you can add to it.

Although some will say that talking to the baby in the womb and reading those books to

them does not help them in the future, I am a strong believer that it does help them and can also

make their lives a bit easier in the long run. My parents made sure we were always doing

something educational but would also try to make it fun for us kids, which I believe is key to a

proper learning environment. I have pushed hard to overcome my setbacks so I am able to pursue

the career that I want to be in, which is education. Not everyone will have a smooth road like

myself, but it takes those certain teachers or adults in your life to help push you. I feel happiness

from being able to help kids who are like myself or those kids whose parents did not take that

extra time to help them.

 References

Advice and resources for language learning in children. (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.childrenlearninglanguages.com/Bilingualism_and_Multilingualism/Early_exposure.h

tml

Yule, G. (2017). The study of language (6th ed.) Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.