Who am I as a learner? (Noelia Máñez)

During eighteen years I have been a learner, so many things have come up to my mind and I have been building my knowledge little by little. The most I have need, have been patience and perserverance, overall, when I had to learn from my mistakes. I have been learning in a private school during fifteen years, and I felt like in a bubble, where all teachers have been there if I need something so I get used to this. After that, suddently, I noticed that something changed in my life  when I arrived to the University and I have to learn how to be more independent not only as a learner but also as a person.

Since I started to be conscious and be aware of all I was learning, I have to try to find the best tool to learn; first, I started talking alone and repeating what I had been doing in class. After that, I tried to do the same my teacher did, writing the things I had learnt on a board and taking the role of my teacher trying to explain what I had learnt before. After doing this during a lot of years, I decided to change the method and try to memorise the concepts without doing nothing, just focusing the attention on remembering the things, and until now it has worked.

It is true that lot of times I have felt that I did not achieve what I want, but I never felt defeated, that is because I know that  learning is a process that could take more o less time to people but you can achieve what you want. Me as a learner, I think that is important to be motivated on what you do and be reflected on what you are learning, it could be the first  factors that I need to feel comfortable with what I am learning.

It is also important to know what you want to study and focus on what you want to achieve and learn, having an objective could make your learning development easier. For example, I have always in mind what I want to be and what I have to be reaching during all these previous years to achieve it, so having this into my mind I have gone towards this objective.

In conclusion, I think that as a learner, what I need is the support and feedback from the others, the necessity of being secure of what I am doing, the perserverance and the need of having an objective to achieve, that nowadays is learning how to take into account all that children need to learn a foreign language.

                        Noelia Máñez.