How I became a near-native speaker of English — my English journey (part 1)

In this series, I’m going to take you through my English language journey and tell you how I went from a teen who was a good speaker, to a fluent near-native speaker of English.

Everyone who starts learning English hopes to be as fluent as a native speaker, hopes to speak English without an accent, and hopes to have the vocabulary of a native speaker.

The road, however, is not simple, and without clear directions, it’s impossible to go from beginner to near-native.

As an English teacher, I hope to share some of the things I’ve done to go from a simple English speaker to a near-native English speaker. Now, I know that I can’t compare to an actual native speaker because I wasn’t raised in an English-speaking country. Still, I do believe that some of the things I’ve done over the years have drastically improved my English language proficiency.

Is near-native the goal?

Before I start sharing my journey, I need to clarify something: becoming a native speaker shouldn’t be your goal (and is impossible). I understand that being as fluent as a native speaker and speaking with near-native pronunciation is a very nice aim, but it shouldn’t be the goal of your language learning journey.

There are many variables at play when you’re learning a language, such as the amount of exposure to English, the number of opportunities you get to use English, your language aptitude (which is your innate feel for language), and the difficulty of the materials.

Knowing this, native speakerism (the idea that only native speakers own the language and can use the language correctly) should never be your goal. Native speakers are excellent language learning buddies, but they shouldn’t be the thing towards which you aim.

I’ll talk more about native speakers and their role in English language learning later.

What did I do?

Let me start with a disclaimer: I’m an English teacher with a bachelor’s degree in English language and culture and a master’s degree in linguistics. This means that I had five years of constant exposure to English at an academic level, as both degrees were taught entirely in English.

But this was a pivotal moment for my language learning journey. I was exposed to English through the study materials and the teachers who spoke English to us. I spoke English to my peers who spoke English too, and I was required to write articles and essays in academic English.

Plus, I had two other significant benefits: my mother is a native speaker of Virgin Island English — so she speaks English a lot at home — and I lived in the UK for a semester while at university. These two benefits provided me with a lot of exposure to authentic (real-world) English.

Language aptitude

One major influence on whether you’re able to become near-native is your so-called language aptitude. Language aptitude is the innate potential you have to learn a language. In Dutch, we call this taalgevoel, which translates as language feeling. And that’s really what it is: the sense — or feeling — you have for languages.

An example of this could be that you recognise that certain words don’t belong in certain places or that you can see similarities between different languages — even when they’re from a different language family.

Fortunately, in a communicative teaching environment, language aptitude does not play a huge role (see Safar & Kormos, 2008). It does play a role when it comes to grammar and deducting the grammar rules of languages.

Being honest

When I started studying English at university, I was ashamed of my limited vocabulary. My limited vocabulary had two origins: (1) I never studied English vocabulary at secondary school because I believed I was already excellent, so I never put in the effort to improve, and (2) I drastically limited my exposure to English in my teen years.

I was good at our grammar test in school, and my writing skills were also adequate, but since I never put any effort into studying for tests, nor did I read many of the books we had to read, I never improved my skills. And as soon as I entered university, I started noticing that my vocabulary was limited.

After all, I had to be honest with myself: am I going to fake that I’m a proficient English speaker and limit my learning, or am I going to accept that I need to improve.

Don’t get me wrong, I probably still had an above-average vocabulary, but now I was in an environment filled with others who also had that and who easily exceeded me. These people had read many books or were excellent gamers, and their language proficiency levels were way higher than mine.

After all, I had to be honest with myself: am I going to fake that I’m a proficient English speaker and limit my learning, or am I going to accept that I need to improve. I chose the latter, which meant that I had to tell others that I didn’t know all the words and that I had to look up all the words. This was when I fell in love with my vocabulary organiser.

On the right track!

This honesty opened my view to new opportunities regarding my English language proficiency. I took a Grammarly subscription, I started speaking English more to my peers — even when working with Dutch students on university assignments, and I increased my exposure to English by reading more and watching content on Netflix.

These steps really increased my vocabulary, but I struggled with academic writing. I failed some and had to do resits because of my academic writing skills, which was even more demotivating (remember: I used to be the best in class, and now I’m almost the worst in class).

I couldn’t produce well-written academic essays, and I kept receiving negative feedback on my grammar. Even though I passed the grammar course, I made grammatical errors I hadn’t heard of before (what in the world was a parallelism error and who came up with the comma splice?!).

My pinnacle of failure

My pinnacle of failure (in my eyes) was failing my Bachelor’s thesis. I thought I’d conducted solid research (semi-sociolinguistic research on the view of English and English as a Lingua Franca in the Kingdom of the Netherlands). I had just returned from my semester abroad at the University of Salford in Manchester, UK, and I had passed my courses there with ease. I had gotten compliments on my writing skills, so I assumed I was ready to start my thesis and finish my Bachelor’s degree. Although the research part went well, the writing part was an arduous process for which I wasn’t ready.

My first version got rejected because I didn’t write a good discussion. My second version (and thus the resit) got rejected, too: the language wasn’t at par with the standards of an English BA graduate. I was heartbroken and anguished. I would receive the pass mark if I edited and improved the language level, but how on earth was I going to do that? And even worse: how could I be a successful teacher and academic if I couldn’t even write proper English?

Here’s part two: How I became a near-native speaker of English — my English journey(Part 2) | by Mr Henriquez | Jun, 2022 | Medium