Personal Profile Essay

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*Personal Profile* By: Michel Montoya Date: 27/10/11 Class: TOLLAT Many people like to learn languages, for fun or need. What is very interesting is the amount of attention that we pay in our language learning process. What makes a “good language learner”? In my personal experience, I will touch very important factors that either helped or affected my second language learning process. These factors are individual differences in language learning. Which are, Intelligence, Aptitude, Learning styles, Personality, Motivation and attitudes/ Motivation in the classroom, Learner’s beliefs, and finally, the age of acquisition and the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) Believe it or not, this characteristics influenced my language learning tremendously. A decade ago, I was literally forced to learn the English language. My family and I had move to Minnesota, USA to live, when I was only 8 years old. I was familiar with the language, but I had never been fully in contact with it. I have always thought of my self as intelligent, but the IQ test score gave me opposite results. Perhaps I have never been good at mathematics, but overall I think I am a good problem solver. This, indeed, helped me in my language learning process a lot, because for example, even if I did not understood the full context of a paragraph, by knowing a few words, I would get the idea of the main concept. My aptitude also helped me, because I like languages. And English seemed to be fairly easy to learn. I do not remember having to put much effort on learning words or patterns. This indeed contributed to help me learn another language. Nowadays I speak three languages. In learning English as a second language my learning style affected my process hugely. I am the kinesthetic type of style. Since I was young when I moved to that English speaking country, it helped me when I would play outside with

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