Carolyn Said:

Someone who knows English as a second language or is bilingual?

We Answered:

my ex who first only knew chinese before moving here told me they knew us as having a lot of rrrrrrrrrr and sssssssssss sounds. Like thats how they would try to jokingly sound like us.

Janice Said:

request: learning english as a second language?

We Answered:

arnt u speeking english now

Crystal Said:

how did you learn English as a second language or foreing language?

We Answered:

Well.... I'm Uruguayan so my native language is Spanish, and no, no one speaks English here.
I'm sixteen and started to learn English when I was ten at an institute, and to tell you the truth I don't remember the methods the teacher used.
But I hardly ever listened to Spanish music, TV, dubbed movies... none of it, a couple of years ago I started to read novels in English... so I think I learned through exposition to the language with help from classes.

I've been teaching my self Japanese for a year now, the methods I use are listening tons of music in Japanese, movies, series, dramas, etc. Forcing myself to think in Japanese, study from textbooks to improve my vocabulary and form of speech.
Another thing that helped me a lot was a website for language exchange where I found several Japanese pen pals that helped me practice.

Now I'm going for Chinese and Korean! but I'll wait till I become good at Japanese to start with a new language

Jeffery Said:

if you are learning or have learned english as a second language, please answer?

We Answered:

English was my second language growing up.

1. What helped?

Repetition, music, rhymes. The Alphabet Song. Copying the letters on our own. Colorful pictures to correlate to common words.

B is for? (show picture) "ball".

Also, continuous personal reading vastly improved the scope of my understanding of the language. Reader's Digest was read from cover to cover. Not only was it very informative, (there is a vocabulary section in it, too), it was and is very entertaining and easy to bring (just the right size).

2. Age: < 3 years old.

3. What did teachers do that worked?

Plenty of examples and seatwork.

4. What did they do that didn't work at all?

Insisting that their own way of constructing a sentence or defining a word is the only way, without explaining why.

5. In an ESL program? No. Did I like it? Not applicable.

6. How would I change the way it was taught?

I would include actions to learning. For example: letter A would be written as "up(stroke), down and across. Have the learner trace the figure with her/his fingers on the paper, on air, and finally write it down.

Have story times. Let the learner hear how it is pronounced. Ask for the meaning of certain words. Let them look in a dictionary and define that word.

For example: "scale" has many meanings. It will not only teach them to understand why that word meant a certain way, it will also show them the various meanings and teach them the skill of using the dictionary.

Good luck in your endeavor, Gwen. The future students will greatly benefit from your desire to teach.

Joann Said:

What books would you recommend to an 13 year old girl who is learning English as a second language?

We Answered:

The book "Star Girl" would be a great book. I'm 13 as well and English is my second language! It's not that hard once you have a bunch of friends around you that speaks the language your trying to learn. Well anyways,I read the book before and it was amazing! I thought the book would be lame due to the book cover or the lack of illustrations on it! I was terribly wrong it's one of my favorite books!GOOD LUCK!

I would love to be her friend and help her out as well if we speak the same language! (:

Suzanne Said:

How hard is it for a person learning English as a second language to start understanding Ebonics?

We Answered:

as soon as ya smoke sum weed the drink some malt Liqa.

Willie Said:

Request: learning English as a second language?

We Answered:

These might help you:

http://www.ecml.at/documents/relresearch…

http://www.ecml.at/documents/relresearch…

http://eku.comu.edu.tr/index/3/1/calptek…