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My English learning
narrative can be started when I was a child. Whatever anyone can say, I think a
good environment can increase the  chances that a
person has to develop something, for good or for bad. In my case, I had an
uncle that was fascinated with English language, and since I was seven to
eight I was also fascinated with English language stuff. He taught me my
first  words, but I
could not form a simple sentence at that time. Everything I knew was
‘tomato’, ‘supermarket’, ‘American’ and their meanings. He had some Speak Up magazines, and I was
crazy to understand what was written there. For that so, I started reading a
three-volume dictionary that I have found in my home. It was an illustrated
dictionary, so it was a motivation for my learning.
I have made lists and lists of copies of the words that seems important to
me, specially those ones that had an illustration exemplifying what that
meant. One curious thing I never could understand was that funny types that
was printed right after the word. Years later I discovered they were phonetic symbols.
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When I was in the
fifth grade at Colégio Dr. José Ferreira,
I started my formal English language learning process. I got enchanted with
the wide world that was waiting for me. In the first class, our teacher
discussed something about the importance of the English language in the world
when the Great Britain
was the most powerful nation, and then when the United States become the
first one after the World War II. It was a really amazing thing to know all
those country names, pronouns, names of colors, curiosities,
greetings, and songs. It was until the seventh grade, when my school stopped
offering English classes to the eighth grade until the second grade of high
school. During that interval, I almost forgot everything I knew, and
unfortunately my parents could not pay a private English institute for me. I
remained just learning some words for I followed the lyrics of my favorite band
 and movies. Again, my thesis on how
environment can motivate or not someone’s skill works.
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In the beginning of
the final year of high school, all students should apply to a preliminary
test, in order to divide students according to basic, intermediate and
advanced English. For my surprise, I got the advanced level. I studied hardly
during the whole year, so that I felt prepared to face the entering exams to
college. However, my learning process was very poor in terms of
conversational skills. Once I was in a class directed only to instrumental
English, all we could get is how to develop vocabulary and avoid text tricks.
For that reason, my reading skills got improved, but my listening and speaking,
for instance, were very poor.
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Then the entering
exams for UFMG came. For my surprise, I was not
as prepared as I thought. The first part of the exams (the multiple choice
one) was OK. However, when I was doing the second phase of the exams... Gosh!
I got completely lost. Later I got my marks only fifty percent of the total
marks. Now I was entering in a different level on English learning.
Everything you suppose you know in school is very little compared to what English
language learning is in the college. That is one of my problems
about school English: it is something that many times is bounded only in
grammatical points, direct translations and useless vocabulary.
Conversational matters are out of the majority of the schools I know. There
is a myth among ordinary people that school English is useless in real
situations. I cannot blame this people for spreading such thing.
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Now I got to college
here at Letras, now I got a new
surprise. The level of English teaching and learning is  totally different of what I
have  already seen.
The first time I attended a class, I saw many colleagues with vast experience
as a teacher and others have traveled abroad. "Where the heck I'm doing
here?" I thought. The teacher asked some volunteers to speak about
ourselves, and I remained as a tomb a couple of weeks, just observing and
getting afraid. So I decided to face it definitely. If I want to be a teacher
of English, I ought to be so. By the end of semester, I could think, read,
listen, speak and write some modest English. But I knew that  there is a big
ocean waiting to be discovered yet. Each semester is completed with my
personal efforts. My aim is to be a better student so that in the end of the
course I could be a good teacher. I
have already planned higher projects after graduation: maybe I can do
something in the old Edinburgh….
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There I am: a student that
runs to achieve my aims. Yes, I know, there are many seas to be discovered
yet. And it is just what makes me so happy when I get involved with English
language: each day is a new to day with new things to learn. I hope my own
learning experience can help someone to get inspired to carry on also.
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2005 Alexandre Delfino Xavier. My Multimedia
Narrative is a
final paper project for the CALL – Computer Aided Language Learning
discipline of the Letras college of the Federal
University of Minas Gerais, Brazil.
Suggestions and critics will be
welcomed at aldelfino@gmail.com
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