Posted: Jan 11, 2012 8:39 pm
1. At what age did you start to learn English?
Not really sure, but at school I think it started when I was about 9. I'm sure I learned a few words and phrases before that, though, outside of school.
2. What was the English teaching in your public education system like:
a) In which country?
Norway.
c) Did your teacher speak your native language during lessons? If so, what for, and do you think it was beneficial?
Can't remember, but I think it was a little of both. "Turn to page 24" etc. would probably have been in Norwegian.
d) How much spoken communication in English did you do during these lessons?
Again, sketchy memory (I'm an old geezer
) but I think the teacher would ask us questions we had to answer in English, and we also had to read a few passages in English. Of course, there was a gradual increase in the level of difficulty over the years.
3. Did you supplement this with private tuition/study in a private language centre? If so, same a) b) c) & d) questions again.
No.
4. Did you ever live abroad in a situation that required you to use English regularly?
No.
5. Other than living abroad, how often did you get to communicate in English? And what form did these communications take?
Not often at all growing up. This was before the internet, so the only times I really needed to use English would be when I went abroad (outside of Scandinavia), which was very rare in my case.
6. How often did you consume English-language media, and did you do so with a conscious effort to study/understand it?
Every day in some form or other; movies and TV-series especially. Norway never dubbed foreign series/movies into Norwegian while I was growing up, thankfully (or if we do now, there is almost always the option to choose the original version instead). They were of course subtitled in Norwegian, though, but that was probably helpful. I didn't watch and read series/movies/books in English (outside of school) specifically in order to learn it per se, but I guess you could say it was a happy side effect(!).
I should add that although I'm quite fluent when writing English, I have a rather typical Norwegian accent when I speak it, much to my chagrin, because I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Perhaps that is actually why. I've always been self conscious of the accent, and therefore was embarrassed to speak English, and so that in turn probably just exacerbated the problem. I also sometimes have a lacking vocabulary, but I think that's more to do with my short term memory failing me, and it happens in my own language as well - that I totally blank out on the word I'm looking for.
Not really sure, but at school I think it started when I was about 9. I'm sure I learned a few words and phrases before that, though, outside of school.
2. What was the English teaching in your public education system like:
a) In which country?
Norway.
c) Did your teacher speak your native language during lessons? If so, what for, and do you think it was beneficial?
Can't remember, but I think it was a little of both. "Turn to page 24" etc. would probably have been in Norwegian.
d) How much spoken communication in English did you do during these lessons?
Again, sketchy memory (I'm an old geezer
) but I think the teacher would ask us questions we had to answer in English, and we also had to read a few passages in English. Of course, there was a gradual increase in the level of difficulty over the years. 3. Did you supplement this with private tuition/study in a private language centre? If so, same a) b) c) & d) questions again.
No.
4. Did you ever live abroad in a situation that required you to use English regularly?
No.
5. Other than living abroad, how often did you get to communicate in English? And what form did these communications take?
Not often at all growing up. This was before the internet, so the only times I really needed to use English would be when I went abroad (outside of Scandinavia), which was very rare in my case.
6. How often did you consume English-language media, and did you do so with a conscious effort to study/understand it?
Every day in some form or other; movies and TV-series especially. Norway never dubbed foreign series/movies into Norwegian while I was growing up, thankfully (or if we do now, there is almost always the option to choose the original version instead). They were of course subtitled in Norwegian, though, but that was probably helpful. I didn't watch and read series/movies/books in English (outside of school) specifically in order to learn it per se, but I guess you could say it was a happy side effect(!).
I should add that although I'm quite fluent when writing English, I have a rather typical Norwegian accent when I speak it, much to my chagrin, because I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Perhaps that is actually why. I've always been self conscious of the accent, and therefore was embarrassed to speak English, and so that in turn probably just exacerbated the problem. I also sometimes have a lacking vocabulary, but I think that's more to do with my short term memory failing me, and it happens in my own language as well - that I totally blank out on the word I'm looking for.