Cristiano Magalhães Costa

Subject: Computer literacy

The other day I was reading an article in Scientific American Magazine that made me realize what was the most important feature in my process of learning a new language.

Motivation and learning

The referred article talks about the role played by dedication and motivation in our lives. Any learning process, the article says, is much more effective when it involves motivation and practice.

Using this theory to think about the way I learnt (and am still learning) the English Language I can, to certain extent, understand how important and true these ideas are.

Aristotle

But the relationship between knowledge and motivation is not recent in history. In the past, the Greek philosopher Aristotle linked the knowledge to the heart and said that that was where our knowledge came from.

This is probably how the expression “to know by heart” happened to appear. Afterwards, people bequeathed the source of knowledge to the head and made the heart be the source of our passion.

Playing with these two ideas, we could say that knowledge and passion are intimately related, whether coming from the heart or not.

My first English classes were when I was adolescent in school. I remember trying to understand the oddity of the apostrophe. How could a “little coma” above the end of a word mean possession? At that time, I thought the construction “of the” much simpler and more important than that faint and “imperceptible comma”.

But the willing to understand that apostrophe came when I got the result of my first test and showed to my mother.

- What a shame! She said.

- How can you get such a terrible grade?

William Shakespeare

At that time, she would hardly think that one day her son would be enjoying William Shakespeare, the most well-known and acclaimed writer of the English language.

But that time of frustrations with the English language is (thanks god!) gone. After those first contacts with English, I started to realize that learning a foreign language was more than going to classes and participating in language riddles. At this time I also stated to realize that there is no way of learning language if I was not able to read. And I knew that because once I heard from somebody that reading improves our general language skills by means of increasing our vocabulary. But, fortunately, reading was not a problem for me. I was really a book worm. I clearly remember myself refusing to go out with some friends to dedicate myself to reading important works of literature such as Machado de Assis’s “Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas”. But reading is a good activity if the place were we are reading is quiet. If it was not quiet, music was the background that helped me concentrate in my reading. At that time, Pink Floyd’s last CD, “The division bell” was the CD I liked the most.

Pink Floyd in the concert A Momentary Lapse Of Reason, between 1987 and 1989.

And a cherished song on this CD is called “Take it Back”.

And once more, there was the lyrics in English to remind me the English I did not know.

Pink Floyd’s lyrics summoned my longing for learning that unknown and beautiful language. I knew that I had to learn it but, even so, I did not take the subject seriously. Some years later, there was the English Language again, in the entrance exam, haunting my life, inviting me to go for it and learn it at once and for good.

There was no hope this time. I had made my choice. “Letras” was the course I was going to attend and English, the language.

And now the problems I had had with the English Language in the have become real problems or, at least, changed its status from simple to more complex problems. Now I see that all of my mother’s criticism was good for something. I learnt English and became a fan not only of the language, but of the culture and literature that comes together with the learning of the language.

But I’m sure my learning process has not stopped yet. It is a continual and must go on till the last of my days. This means that motivation makes people change the world and, above everything, believe in the power of study, knowledge and progress.