Wright, W. E. (2015). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, and
Practice (2nd Ed.). Philadelphia, Caslon.
How I Learned My Second Language
Wayne E. Wright
English is my native language and was the only language of my home growing up.
My second language is Khmer, the dominant language of Cambodia, a country in Southeast
Asia. I began learning Khmer at age 19 while serving a 2-year mission for my church in
Washington, DC, where I was assigned to work with newly arrived Southeast Asian
refugees. Two months of intensive language training is provided for most missionaries, but
Khmer instruction was not available at the time. Thus, I had to learn the language on my
own. My first missionary companion taught me everything he knew in one night. It didn’t
take long because he didn’t know much other than how to count to 10 and how to say,
Hello; Goodbye; See you tomorrow; Where are you going? Eat rice; My name is __________;
What is your name? I wanted and needed to know more than that. I found a beginning-level
textbook from Cornell University, then had to track down the accompanying audiotapes,
which for some reason were available only from Yale University. The textbook, written in
the 1970s, was based on the audiolingual approach. I also obtained a Khmer-English
dictionary, an English-Khmer dictionary, and a book on the Khmer system of writing with a
beginning reader.
Every morning I dutifully studied the language, practicing the dialogues and doing
the drills. When I visited the homes of Cambodian friends, I tried saying whatever I had
learned that morning. My attempts were usually met with happiness and laughter—
happiness over my efforts to learn Khmer, but laughter accompanied by comments such as,
“Man, you sound like a book!” They would then teach me the more colloquial ways of how
Cambodians talk to each other in real life. I kept up the drills at home and carried notecards
and a pen with me everywhere I went. In each home I went to, I tried to learn a few new
words and practice words I had learned previously. As soon as I learned a new word, I
made a point to use it as many times that day as possible. One simple, perhaps silly
example: after I learned the word for refrigerator, I asked every family I visited that day
about their refrigerator. Do you have refrigerator? Is it a good refrigerator? Do you have a
lot of food in your refrigerator? How old is your refrigerator? What color is your
refrigerator? I discovered that if I used a vocabulary word several times each day—forcing
it into my interactions with native speakers—it became mine. I would remember it. I
acquired it.
In learning to read Khmer, I got stuck. I memorized the names or sounds of all the
letters by writing them and practicing them with flash cards. I’d impress my Cambodian
friends when I visited their homes and they drilled me with the flash cards and corrected
my pronunciation. But didn’t know how to read any words until a 14-year-old girl told me,
“If you know the letters, you can read.” She took my flash cards and showed me how to put
the letters together to form words and sound them out. Since Khmer is an alphabetic
language, the process was the same as in English but, thankfully, with much more
consistent letter-to-sound correspondence. A light bulb went off in my head. She wrote a
bunch of words and I could read them! I was able to transfer my knowledge of reading in
my first language to reading in my second language. After that the dictionaries became very
©2015 Caslon, Inc. All rights reserved.
Wright, W. E. (2015). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, and
Practice (2nd Ed.). Philadelphia, Caslon.
useful tools. I carried the Khmer-English dictionary around with me everywhere I went. I
also began to read the Khmer translations of the Book of Mormon and the Bible. In my
Khmer Book of Mormon, I would stop and highlight each unknown word, look it up in the
dictionary, and write the translation near the word. When I look back at the book, it’s
exciting to see how the highlighting and notes became less and less frequent on subsequent
pages, until there were hardly any markings at all toward the end. I got to the point where I
could infer the meaning of new words from the context.
After my mission, I returned home to Long Beach, which has the largest population
of Cambodians of any city outside of Cambodia. I immediately immersed myself in the
Khmer language and culture in the city. I served in the Cambodian congregation of my
church and joined the Cambodian clubs in college. Many of my friends were Cambodians. I
was a frequent patron of the Cambodian businesses concentrated along a few streets in the
downtown area. I ate in Cambodian restaurants, had my hair cut at Cambodian
barbershops, got my car fixed at Cambodian auto shops, and bought newspapers, books,
CDs, and food from Cambodian markets. I attended a wide range of Cambodian community
cultural events and hung out at homes of Cambodian friends. I spoke as much Khmer as I
could while in these settings.
I got a job as a bilingual teacher’s aide in the local school district. I participated in
community-based Khmer language classes (designed for Cambodian youth, but I was
always welcomed) held at a Cambodian Buddhist temple, or at the university sponsored by
Khmer student organizations. Later I received formal Khmer language instruction through
the Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute, held at Cornell University the year I
participated. About a year later I had the opportunity to live and work in Cambodia with a
volunteer organization modeled on the Peace Corps. While in Cambodia, I fell in love with
and married a wonderful woman who is native Khmer speaker. Upon my return I began
working as a Khmer bilingual teacher and maintained my active presence in the Khmer
community, until I moved to Arizona in 2000 to pursue graduate studies. In Arizona, and
now in Texas, I made connections with the local Cambodian community. While minuscule
in comparison with Long Beach, these communities afforded my wife and I continual
opportunities to make Cambodian friends with whom we interact in Khmer. In 2009 I spent
another 6 months in Cambodia as a Fulbright Scholar teaching at the Royal University of
Phnom Penh. I used Khmer extensively to communicate with my students, colleagues,
family members, and others while I was there.
Many of the second language acquisition theories in this chapter have helped me
understand, as I look back, how I attained proficiency in Khmer. From the innatist
perspective, Krashen’s theories prove helpful. While I was trying to learn the language
through books and tapes, I ultimately acquired much more than what was in my language
learning materials. By surrounding myself with the language, I was able to begin to acquire
the language naturally. My affective filter was low because of the good-natured
Cambodians who were very supportive of and flattered by my efforts to speak their
language. Books, tapes, and dictionaries provided an initial jump start (learning), but more
important, these tools enabled me to have meaningful conversations during which I could
receive comprehensible input (acquisition).
The formal Khmer language instruction at Cornell followed a strong communicative
approach. We read a lot of stories, not to translate them and look up all the unknown
words, but to discuss them. I acquired new vocabulary and language structures in this
©2015 Caslon, Inc. All rights reserved.
Wright, W. E. (2015). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, and
Practice (2nd Ed.). Philadelphia, Caslon.
meaningful context. Outside of the formal classrooms, I continued to receive
comprehensible input through reading. Language acquired through reading led to language
used in conversations, which led to more extensive conversations, which led to more
comprehensible input. The community-based classes I attended focused on teaching native
Khmer-speaking youth to read. The approach used with the text was a bit like grammartranslation, and heavily teacher centered. But for me as a non-native learner, it was
communicative, because the teacher and students spoke in Khmer while we undertook the
academic task of deciphering a piece of Khmer text.
The cognitive/developmental hypotheses reveal how crucial my efforts were to seek
out as many opportunities as possible to interact with others in Khmer. They show me how
input from these interactions helped me build my developing Khmer language system and
allowed me to use (speak) what I had learned and acquired. When I learned a new word, I
did not acquire it until I used it to interact with others. My need to speak and my desire to
be able to say and do certain things in the language helped me recognize gaps in my
knowledge, pushing me to pay attention to (or notice) certain things in conversations, thus
opening the way for me to acquire them. And through speaking (and writing), I learned
how to make appropriate use of what was stored in my implicit knowledge.
Sociocultural theory helps me understand that the interactions and conversations I
had were not just mechanical processes to provide input and output opportunities but that
much of my language learning came about through negotiating meaning with native
speakers who were patient with me and who scaffolded my learning. When I initially relied
on vocabulary and language forms from the books, my utterances in attempted
conversations were not incorrect, yet they were not right. The sociocultural status of the
speaker and the listener drives appropriate language use in Khmer to a much greater
extent than in English. There are gender specific familial pronouns, and pronouns and
verbs that vary according to the social status of the speakers. Learning this system in a
formal way was not entirely possible. The scaffolding my friends provided within my zone
of proximal development socialized me into the real ways of speaking and communicating
appropriately in the Khmer speech community.
The more I used Khmer for meaningful and authentic communication purposes the
more I acquired the language. I reached the point where I no longer needed to use Khmer
language learning materials. I stopped halfway through an intermediate-level textbook and
never got into the advanced-level book. Soon I rarely needed to look up new words in the
bilingual dictionaries. I didn’t need them anymore. The more authentic, meaningful
conversations I had with native speakers, the more my ability to communicate at higher
levels increased. I attained communicative competence. As I began reading more in Khmer
for information and entertainment and less for explicit language learning practice, the
more I naturally acquired new vocabulary and language structures from the written text. I
was at the point where my focus was on the author’s meaning, not the meaning of
individual words; thus, the act of recreational reading was an act of meaningful
communication between the author and me.
I can’t say for certain how exactly I attained the level of proficiency I now have in my
second language, Khmer. But each of the different theories helps me to understand
different parts of my language acquisition experience.
©2015 Caslon, Inc. All rights reserved.