I can speak 3 languages - English (fluently); French (reasonably); and Japanese (badly!). I was born in New Zealand where there are 2 official languages - English and Maori. What is Maori? Good question! It is the native language of New Zealand. It sounds a lot like other Polynesian languages like Tongan, Hawaiian, Fijian etc. New Zealand is a VERY English country. Unfortunately, very few people actually speak Maori now. It is a beautiful language, but it is slowly disappearing. New Zealand children learn a little bit of Maori at school, but not very much. I can count to 10, say hello, and sing the national anthem in Maori, but that's about it. So, I grew up as a native English speaker.
When I was 7 years old, I started taking singing and drama lessons. I had to learn how to speak English very clearly. My speaking was so clear that I sounded like a newsreader on T.V. Other New Zealanders would even ask if I was British! I also had to sing in many foreign languages: Italian; German; Latin; French; and Maori. I feel very lucky to have had this experience because it really helped me to develop very good pronunciation skills. Unfortunately, it made me quite a perfectionist because I had to pronounce all the sounds perfectly.
I moved to Japan in 2006 and worked as an English teacher in a private language school. It was a wonderful experience. This is where I really fell in love with teaching English. However, I had difficulty learning Japanese - I had very good pronunciation skills because of my experience with singing in foreign languages and this made people expect that my knowledge of Japanese was also very good. But it wasn't good at all and I soon developed an anxiety to speak out.
To complicate things further, I decided to study French while I lived in Japan, not Japanese. My boyfriend (now husband) is from Montreal and is perfectly bilingual, so there was more of a reason to learn French than Japanese because we planned on moving to Quebec in the future. Now we live in Montreal and, even though my French is not that bad, I still have a lot of anxiety to speak out. I HATE making mistakes even though I know that they are important for my learning. It really helps me as a teacher to understand how frustrating learning English can be at times and be really supportive of my students.
So, this is my language-learning journey so far. What's yours?
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