Narrativas coletadas por Liliane Sade

Aprendiz 6 :(sexo masculino – certificado de proficiência – 1o período de Letras)  

Narrativa coletada por Liliane Sade

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.