English - my 2nd Language

Second Language Acquisition is one of the papers I'm doing this semester.

Much as I would like to argue that I'm more accustomed to English now and I can probably express myself better in English (yes, I think mostly in English too), English is still my second language. Although friends have classified me as "pretty native" (note: not "native", just "pretty native"), by linguistic definition, English is considered as my L2. Especially in relation to Mandarin.

The fact that I grew up in a multi-lingual country isn't very helpful when I try to think of my own experience when relating to the SLA stuff I'm doing in class. Simply put, I think I confuse myself. I suspect I don't really comply fully as a SL learner, but I haven't done anything on child lang. acquisition nor multi-lingualism to say anything about them.

For the past month, even more so the last couple of weeks, I found myself struggling with language structures. I suspect my Japanese is confusing my English. I wonder if this is what happens when the parameters in the Universal Grammars get un-set, and then re-set? I find myself being tongue-tied cognitively (mind-tied?) and my English discourse are so full of errors my high school English teacher would be horrified! The fact that I am aware of them makes them mistakes, not errors. Ugh.

Not that my Japanese is getting anywhere better.

My Mandarin? Don't even mention it.

Perhaps I need more input to trigger more UG.

But. Maybe all this is just part of my Interlanguage? an inevitable language acquisition process? and I should not even fret about it because unless I fossilize, it's all gonna be good and beautiful one day?

I can't wait for that one day to come.

(maybe I should submit this as my learning journal. hmmmm.)