Aprendiz 13

(sexo masculino – certificado de proficiência – 1^o período de Letras)

I learned English when my family and me moved to the United States; I was 14 years old and didn’t know any English. It was very hard at first, but many schools in the US have a program called ESOL, which means: English as a Second Language. The ESOL classes are special English classes given to foreign students once The US receives so many immigrants. The ESOL had five levels, when we were at the first level we spent most of the school day in these classes, but as we progressed we started to have the normal classes with the Americans. The most interesting thing about the ESOL classes was the fact that many different people from all over the world would study together. And in relation to the process of learning English it was very noticeable that - accept for the Japanese who didn’t even have to take ESOL - the Orientals had a lot of problems to learn English, because their languages were very different, and so did the Hispanics who weren’t alphabetized.

After around six months my English had became good enough for me to communicate well with other people, but it really improved after one year when I started working in a restaurant called Burger King. I had to take the orders in the drive through from an intercom, so it was necessary to speak clearly and pay lots of attention to what people were saying. Pretty soon it was possible to know the race and nationality of a person  simply by their accents.

I guess the main reasons for my quick learning of English were: first the constant exposure to the new language, second the “similarity” between English and Portuguese and third the help given by the American school which I attended.

Professora de Inglês:

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.