Nome:  Adriano Santos Reis
Idade: 24 years
Escolaridade: superior incompleto - Letras
Tempo de aprendizagem: 8  
Narrativa coletada por Francisco Figueiredo
 
Since my childhood I have dreamed of being a person who speaks English
fluently. I loved English. I thought that I would find few difficulties to learn this language. Nowadays, I am 24 years old and I think that I have more difficulties than before.
 
Actually, in my English classes there is almost no problem for me to understand English teachers when they are speaking. But in my speaking and writing I have all the difficulties. I think that I still think in English based on Portuguese grammatical structure, I do not know exactly. I had my first formal contact with English at the secondary school in a public school.
 
Before this, I always thought of studying English in a specialized school, but in my homeland, Balsas- MA, there was not this kind of school at that time. Then I studied alone some things that I had enjoyed, mainly vocabulary. At that time, the focus that the teacher emphasized was grammar, mainly and almost always the verb to be. Although I liked English, these classes were very boring.
 
Seven years ago, I worked in a language school called Mnemosystem and I liked the method of teaching used there. The focus of learning was conversation. Then, when I stopped working there, I began to study English for the first time in a specialized center. Since the first class the student practiced conversation. There were CDs that the students would use. We would listen to each sentence and repeat it many times.
 
To improve my English I have always listened to songs, trying to understand the lyrics, and I have watched films, trying to understand what the characters said without reading the subtitles.
 
Five years ago, when I went to my homeland, I studied in a vacation English course with an American teacher called Christopher. It was good, because it was the first time that I had contact with a native speaker. This experience gave me courage to study English more.
 
Nowadays I study English at University, but I am not fluent in this language yet. The difficulties in learning English discouraged me to improve it. Today I like English less than before, and now I am only motivated, not determined to learn English. At the beginning of my learning process it was the opposite.