Nome: Maria Juliana de Souza
Idade: não informado
Escolaridade: não informado
Tempo de aprendizagem: não informado
I started studying English in fifth grade at my regular school and I enjoyed it very much! I can remember my first English class, my teacher wrote a poem on the blackboard and as I always loved rhymes, I loved that one and appreciated my teacher very much.
At that moment of our lives, my father decided that we kids should learn English in a private course and send me to MAI, at av. Brasil. I remember that I loved that school and their boring classes. We, students used to repeat a lot, those old lessons.
Their method was based on Audiolingualism, but I loved the small pictures and can even remember some dialogues nowadays. I remember my first teacher and my second one. I can remember most of them and I can even remember a lesson were characters were eating fish for breakfast in Phoenix, Arizona. It was amusing to me that someone could eat fish for breakfast! Even today, I am not sure they eat fish for breakfast in Arizona, but this possibility made me dream about other people’s way of life and I am almost sure dreaming and imagining was an important learning skill I developed.
Maybe, was not Audiolingualism that made me learn English, but the ability of developing a ‘dreaming tool’ for learning.
When I was in Ensino Médio, I went to the United States for a 3-Month Exchange student program and came back to Brasil with the decision of developing a teaching career. What I did after I came back to Brasil was to enroll myself in English courses and now at FALE, UFMG.
Analyzing my learning experience, I cannot find the steps of Communicative Approach formally designed but I think that if I had not built a ‘language learning skill in my brains’, I would have never learned English. Building knowledge is Communicative Approach goal and I think I reached it.
Reference:
http://www.sil.org/lingualinks/LANGUAGELEARNING/OtherResources/GudlnsFrALnggAndCltrl