The Narratives of Acehnese Students’ Experiences in Learning English: A Language Acquisition Perspective

Acehnese students are mostly bilingual with Acehnese as their native language and Indonesian as their second language. Consequently, English is learned as a third language or foreign language. This study aims to find out the experience of Acehnese students in acquiring their native language and their experiences in acquiring English as a third of foreign language. By using narrative inquiry, the researcher gathers the life stories of the participants. In-depth interview was used as the instrument of this study. The participants of this study are seven students in the Department of English Language Education who speak Acehnese as their native language. The finding of this research implies that the Acehnese students acquired their native language from their family and from the exposure of language that is being spoken in their neighbourhoods. On the other hand, Acehnese students acquired English from their school environment particularly from the teachers and from their own desires.