Nome: Andréia Rodrigues de Souza
Idade: 22 anos
Escolaridade: 4° ano do curso de Letras  
Narrativa coletada por Francisco Figueiredo
 
My first contact with the English language happened when I was ten years old. First of all, the teacher taught us about the pronoun “I”. I remember exactly what the teacher said us: “This pronoun is always written with capital letter”.
 
During the eight years that I studied English at school, we didn’t speak English in class, I had no class on pronunciation. The teacher spoke in Portuguese and she taught us about grammar aspects. That way, when I finished High School, I had little knowledge of the language.
 
By that time, I tried to study through songs, texts and I used to translate them. Some texts were given by teachers, others I found in English books. Once, when I was sixteen, my teacher asked us, as homework, to write from one to one thousand and we had to write two songs in English and after that to translate them into Portuguese. I chose two songs that are sung by Elton John: Nikita and Sacrifice. Of course I didn’t do the correct translation, but I got the best mark in the homework.
 
When I started my course at University, I was very afraid because the teacher spoke only in English and in my class there were some fluent students in the language.
 
My teacher was a good teacher, when he noticed my shyness and the little knowledge of the language I had, he began to motivate me to study and to speak more and more, that way I could get rid of my shyness.
 
At first, I always wrote everything I wanted to say. So, the teacher told me it wasn’t good for my learning.
 
There were diversified methods. Every class, the teacher taught through different ways. He was always trying to motivate us more and more. He used a textbook, songs, extra texts and activities from other books, conversation, theatre, short stories, listening and other things.
 
In this first deeper contact with the language, I could learn a lot, but after three years studying English I notice that it is necessary more effort to learn more. So, the way that I study today is different: I listen to music, I try to understand what they say, I always repeat what is said, I watch films in English, I repeat what the actors or the actresses say, I read English books and texts too and I talk to other students about several subjects.
 
Even so, I have many difficulties in listening and in pronouncing the words correctly. In my opinion, I should try to speak more and to practice listening more and more. Besides, I would like to have more time to study and to improve my English; in the future I would like to travel to England and to study there for some months.