|
Name: Tadeu Santos I will start talking
about my English learning history in my hometown, Teófilo
Otoni. Up to my seventeenth birthday I did not care
at all about the English Language and I took the regular Public school
course. It did not draw any attention at that time. I even thought it was a
boring thing to study. Then when I was seventeen years old, I moved to I remember feeling
really inferior and not able to talk to her. I was afraid to look really
foolish and shallow, but things turned out to be all right and she ended up being
extremely nice. As time went by I started studying alone, just so that I
could talk to her. She had told me she had learned English listening to Hanson, (see picture on the left) an
American band of which she was a fan as a teenager, they have several hit
songs just as Mmmbop and she had also said she did it in a three
month’s time which amazed me deeply. I said to myself “if she did it I could
do it as well”. Said and done. After learning, translating and studying for
five months I was already able to communicate in English. The first day that I had
the courage to talk to her in English was a really great day. She was
surprised because she did not know I had been studying so hard. We talked for
the whole night, and I felt rewarded and motivated. Eventually I ended up
loving the language, and other languages too, so
much that I gave up studying for Computer Science, though I had already
subscribed to the university exams. In the beginning of the next year I was
studying Letras.
Another important moment
in my learning history was the first contact with English native speakers.
One tends to think his English is good if he had not had contact with native
speakers yet. I was truly mistaken. In the end of my first year I met this
American who spoke Portuguese but felt lazy to speak it. We became great
friends. When we really started to talk in English, the penny dropped. I got
quite shocked at how little and bad my English was. He spoke too fast and I
almost gave it all up. What happened back then
is that I did not have any guide neither of what nor how to study. I had this
feeling that studying English was about studying songs so I studied no
conversations, no big texts, no reading at all and worse I avoided speaking
and writing. My grammar was truly poor and my range of vocabulary even worse.
I found myself just repeating song lines all the time. I certainly could
communicate but that was not enough. After that I had my
second English learning experience. After I got to FALE I did not started learning more
English right away. It took me some time to realize I needed to improve it. I
started studying hard then: listening, reading, talking in every opportunity,
and watching movies in English with no subtitles. Soon I took English Syntax
and Phonology courses, which brought me much knowledge about the language. I
started reading novels in English and this, too, was extraordinary. I found
it to be an amazing way to learn vocabulary; only one must be very patient to
look words up. Finally I took the History
of the English Language course. It changed my views about the language
and I got to love it even more. Though today I like German better. Fernanda and I stayed just friends, since our friendship had
become so strong we could not see each other as anything else anymore.
Unfortunately I hardly get the chance to talk to her nowadays. Lack of time.
But when we meet, it surely is an English meeting. I believe that the
Motivation that she represented was the main factor for me to have learned it
so fast. As she did with the American band she ended up working for, while
they were here in Today I consider my
English to be fairly acceptable. As languages are like this I will learn
English for the rest of my life and native speakers do not scare me anymore.
Unless they are from Liverpool.
(Click here to
listen to View
from
|