Name: Alfredo Luiz Nunes Menezes
Alfredo’s Home Page
Thank you for visiting my page. I hope it
worthy your interest
Oxente, such stuff, English, is so useful to
us as Artistic, Civic,
and Moral Education…
Back in the earlier 80`s I was at a
public school in a small town in the northeastern part of the state of Bahia. It’s named Cícero Dantas. As we hadn’t had any English in the primary level, the English was
presented to us as soon as we were in the first year of the college, when I was
around 12 years old. Nobody could guess how such matter would help us later in
our life.
- Minha
mãe disse que inglês é fácil: é só trocar o –ão por
–íon= ação – acion.
-Ah ,ta. A minha me ensinou umas frases: Dio
come te ammo.
-
Eu vou fugir daqui agora...
- I love you...
And the teacher didn’t know English at all…
- Acho
melhor falar em português mesmo, né? Assim todo mundo tira 10.
- Oooba!
Well the English teacher at that time didn’t speak English at all,
and besides teaching English he used to be the teacher of sports; anyway he is
a very nice guy and I think he did the best he could. I remember some of his
mistakes: he explained that the difference between the pronoun possessive and
reflexive, my and mine, was due the gender, the first masculine and the least
feminine.
The unbearable lightness of learning…
But nobody at that place and at that time was very concerned about
leaning a foreign language, the word globalization
hadn’t been invented yet. So we used to make some class works such as collect
pictures of clothes, parts of the body, animals, and making some kind of album,
naming the pictures. I believe that my first experiences in English, regardless
the lack of professionalism and theoretical basis, were worth a lot because
they were informal and
provided the kids very positive feedback.
- Vamos
fazer um trabalho: vocês vão recortar revistas e colar no caderno. Qualquer
coisa serve. O trabalho é colocar o nome em inglês vale 1000 pontos e vocês me
entregam no final do semestre.
- Meu Deus, não vamos
conseguir passar é muito difícil, tamos
perdidos...
The first use of dictionaries
… I think it was the best acquisition of that year.
But, after a long period of
suffering we got our task done:
BIKE DOG BOOK SOCKS BUS LEG FISH JACA
After
that, I moved to
I confess I was very divided at the second year because I liked French and now I know that what I really liked are different languages themselves, the different approach to the world they give us, so French or English were interesting to equally. But English language has a great advantage: it is our lingua franca nowadays and everybody is told to learn it to get a better life. I don’t know if it is like that, but…
But I know what led me to learn English: it
was what some people call anglo-saxon cultural domination and its good and bad
deeds in our mass culture. Who doesn’t watch some cartoons or series made in
Looney
Tunes Intro Music 
or Sesame street (it is for us, mature people).
Above all, I love music and those music,
films, cartoons, images of those countries made me interested in comprehend English
language and the culture of those dominant countries, such US and
Great-Britain. The overwhelming tide of American films (in English, of course)
was another challenge to me. Listen
to this part of Pulp
Fiction, the film. Listen to this other hallmark of the 20th
century is “Gone with the wind…” and its famous part Frankly
my Dear… Everything said in English. How can we resist?
During my two years of English at the High School I tried some
private English schools, but they are very boring with old fashioned teaching
approaches, as well the High School itself, the type of “ Sit down…” 
or “the book is on the table” . The exercise
we were supposed to do seemed nonsense and tiring at all 
. Of course I gave up those classes in the
first month. 
.
But something happened: the TVE had a program called “Aprenda Inglês com Música” and I started following its presentations. The presenter was Marcia Kriegel, I guess, and the music was the very pop music at the time, including Madonna, Beatles and Carly Simons etc .
And I‘ll always remember the day and the music that opened up my eyes to the fact that I REALLY COULD UNDERSTAND this language, despite the classes on the schools that were very less effective.
It was a very camp music, by Barry Manilow
(he looks like Cauby Peixoto)
and the name was “Ready
to take a Chance Again”, here comes the lyrics:
You remind me, I live in a shell
Safe from the past and doing okay
But not very well
No jolts, no surprises,
No crisis arises my life goes along as it should
Its all very nice but not very good
And I'm ready to take the chance again
Ready to put my love on the line
With you...
Been living with nothing to show for it
You get what you get when you go for it
And I'm ready to take a chance again with you
When she left me, in all my despair
I just held on, my hopes were all gone
Then I found you there
And I'm ready to take the chance again
Ready to put my love on the line
With you
Been living with nothing to show for it
You get what you get when you go for it
And I'm ready to take a chance again,
Ready to put my love on the line
With you
Been living with nothing to show for it
You get what you get when you go for it
And I'm ready to take a chance again
Ready to take a chance again, with you.....
With you
It was very fun because watching the program, the English rules and its
words made sense, on the contrary, in the classroom it didn’t. I still remember
the phrases of it, like “No crisis arises my life goes along as it should … and at the time I found myself singing it and they are complete
sentence that made me think about the language and its rules, because these
rules had a superb explanation from the program presenter who seems to have an
entire domain in the matter.
* By the
way mates, if you want to see any lyrics, I have discovered a very interesting
site: www.letras.terra.com.br,
in which you can find almost any lyrics, in Portuguese or English.
So, I started my real approach to English. I
was delighted by the awareness that I was able to read, to listen the radio, to
ask something, to sing or to write, IN ENGLISH.
In 1987 started
my Laws course and in 1991, I graduated in it. In this same year I enlisted
myself in the vestibular to study Letras at UFSe. But I moved from the city and started another job,
here in BH, so I postponed my dream of formally to study English until 2000,
when I started my UFMG course, which I hope I can conclude this semester.
I
said formally, because between 1992 and 1999 I studied English with some
private teacher and some of them were very nice and helped me a lot to improve
my knowledge of the language.
Well, of course my learning process doesn’t
finish along with my graduation.
I feel I’m just
in the middle of this process and it is getting more and more amazing, and good
surprises happen all the time, just like this course via internet, in which I
have learned so much with Professor Vera Menezes and my cybermates,
and the endless resource the net has to help us.
The learning
process never ends and we must be aware to catch the best of the moment such a
TV program or the net, where we can fin sites with listening materials, reading materials, and complete English courses…So it can
make a difference in my learning process.
So, bye for the
moment…
