For my first blog for EDCI 335 I decided to choose the prompt about describing a time when I overcame a particularly difficult learning challenge. A difficult learning challenge that I faced was learning English as a child after immigrating to Canada as a young child. This was quite a difficult task as I had close to zero prior knowledge of English before moving to Canada, and the vocabulary and the grammar were completely different from my native language.

One of the main reasons I was able to overcome this challenge was that I had ample motivation for learning the topic as everyone around me spoke only English and being unable to speak left me unable to communicate basic ideas. Since I basically had no idea what anyone was saying there were many situations I can recall when I felt left out and curious about the contents of conversations that I was missing out on which motivated me to become proficient at English as quickly as I could.

The main learning theory that was applied for my English learning was constructivism as I would constantly be applying what I learned from the people and environment around me in everyday conversations, reading, and writing in order to improve my English skills on a daily basis. An example of this would be copying phrases or words said by cartoon characters on television and applying them to real life conversations and seeing how the people I was speaking to reacted in order to gauge if I’m using what I learned correctly.

Another learning theory that was applied for my English learning was behaviourism. As I slowly grew more proficient at speaking English and became able to better communicate with my classmates and interact with the world around me it had a sort of snowball effect where I would feel greater positive reinforcement each time I felt I had improved which would make me more motivated to learn English at the same time. Although learning was quite difficult and slow at first, when many of the pieces started coming together the pace of my learning started accelerating very quickly.