aprendiz: 7professora
Narrativa coletada por Liliane Sade
A
REPORT ON ENGLISH LEARNING
As
my father was very fond of languages, I remember having English lessons with him
as a very young girl, with my brother and sister. I can’t remember the method
he used, probably the learning of words and numbers to begin with.
At
twelve I started learning English at school. As I attended a Methodist Institute,
my teacher was an American missionary, who couldn’t speak a word of Portuguese,
so we learned through the direct method. I attribute much of the easiness with
which I learned pronunciation and accent to her, added to my eagerness to be a
proficient in the language.
In
school I had three years of English. As I loved reading novels, and was very
much in love with English, I started reading them in that language. I can tell
you I didn’t understand much of the first novel I read, but I still remember
its name: red sky at Morning, and it told of American soldiers in Italy during
WW2. As a side activity, loving pop songs, I would sit down and write – or try
to – write the lyrics of those songs I loved best. Many of them were left with
countless blanks, but soon I learned to go to the dictionary and try the work by
the sound, and find (some of the times) the words which fitted semantically and
syntactically in those blanks. To tell the truth, it was the only usage I found
for the dictionary, as I was too eager to read on when eating up novels to stop
and look up the meaning of words.
When
I was 15, I started at ICBEU, a language institute in BH, but by that time I was
pretty converse in the language. I studied there for two years. Again I took a
bread, but never stopped reading or singing or taking down lyrics.
At
twenty I tried my luck at Cultura Inglesa. Not only was I classified to a high
level of class, but I was soon invited to take the Cambridge FCE exam, which I
passed with honours, having also been invited to join the Cultura staff as a
teacher. One year later I passed the Proficiency exam, getting an A, which at
the time was a real feat.
One
thing is very important to be recorded: in all the places I studied, I never had
traditional grammar learning. At ICBEU, the stress was on conversation, idioms
and reading. At Cultura, the stress was on reading, writing and the learning of
literature. So, after so many years, I attribute my large range of vocabulary to
extensive reading, and my accent to singing together with native borns. My
accent changed a little through the years, but I was never accused of bad
pronunciation.
I
am still learning though, as we are never completely proficient in anything as
long as we’re alive.