Name: Daniele Arantes Nakashima   

Quoting Shakespeare here is more than a matter of existentialism; even knowing that I grew up thinking about what I should be in life, I have to confess that it has no response at all...

This is my English Learning History which will show some passages of my English acquisition throughout my student life. But before I start I want to tell that my seek of English as a second language began with a strong desire to communicate with foreign people, principally because I am a very talkative person and I love learn culture and everything related to it. I always heard that language is the most powerful tool in modern life, and I could experience this statement building my English knowledge.

My challenge with English acquisition followed my personal history; I want to confess that I lived part of my life seeking my English proficiency because I knew that it would be an important thing in the future. This could explain why this narrative seems to be very close to the history of my life.

THE BEGINNING

My first English input happened when I was 10 to 12 years old with English music. At this time I did not have an opportunity to study English in school, but I started to dance jazz and all the music my teacher used in dance classes were in English.

I started to be a fan of Madonna and my dance teacher gave me the Madonna’s LP (long player) called “Like a Prayer”.

It was really fantastic because it was the first time that I heard several time the same music in an unknown language which echoed in my mind so far. Then, English started to be part of my life.

ENGLISH AT SCHOOL

My English learning started at a primary public school in a very traditional way. The teaching of English was based on descriptive grammars which followed the grammar-centred approach that says that the most important part of the language is its grammar, and it says also that language learning is the accumulation of mastered rules of the grammar.

At the very beginning of my English learning I heard and had to repeat several times throughout years “the most popular” VERB TO BE. This kind of English language learning is part of the audiolingualism method, which divided the language into four skill areas and also recommended a strict sequencing of them: listening, speaking, reading and writing. In terms of listening and speaking the audiolingualists used pronunciation drills (a way of learning a language by repeating words and sentences many times) to teach English in 60s and early 70s. This language teaching method was highly used in my elementary and secondary school times (80s and 90s).

Unfortunately, at this time my parents could not pay for me a private English school, then what I learned in English did not go beyond the basic structures and “chunks” (pre-fabricated phrases), such as basic greetings, classroom expressions, etc. Although, this situation did not annoy me to much at elementary and secondary school because I just had discovered my first love…the dance. And I always thought that I would have time to study English later on…

FIRST EXPERIENCE IN A REAL ENVIRONMENT

The time passed and I had an opportunity in 1997 to go to Europe. At this time I was 17 years old and I could be part of an excursion to Europe with other students and teachers. This experience happened in my last year of high school at “EESG Zuleika de Barros” in São Paulo and it was part of a project created by our teacher of physical education and it was an amazing experience. It was an economical tour (you should believe in it!!!) arranged by “Pedrão”, my dear teacher of physical education, the one who had contacts in Europe because he had previous experiences in an exchange project that gives opportunities for Brazilian boys to play soccer in Europe and also the other way round, this teacher brings European boys to experience our way to play soccer.

Here goes the newspaper report (in Portuguese) about this tour:

My English proficiency was very basic at this time and unfortunately I could not have a conversation with foreign students who we met in places where we stayed. That was my first and big frustration with my lack of communication.

As we stayed at hostels in London, Lisbon, Barcelonan and Paris we could meet people from different countries but I always needed a help when I wanted to talk with these people, two friends of mine who had a very good proficiency in English helped me a lot on it. We were almost 25 people but only 4 or 5 of us speak English at this time, they were of course the ones who learned English at private English schools.

This lack of communication was my challenge in Europe and it was also a fact which stimulated me to foster my English language awareness.

Something like that had happened with my lack of communication:

AAAhhhhhhhh!!!!!

With this experience abroad I saw how important English as a second language is, principally when we want to communicate. At that time I was not aware of the globalization through the internet and all the communication it provides because I had no access to it.

Then, when I came back to Brazil I exchanged few letters with people I met from other countries but I had to confess that again I needed help of a friend of mine who translated all the words I wanted to say in those letters.

FIRST EXPERIENCE IN JAPAN

Hiroshige’s painting

After my high school education I prepared myself to go to Japan to live with my family in Hamamatsu city, they went there to work hard as a “dekassegui” which means people who immigrate to Japan to work for a while to go back to their original country with better financial condition. My first idea was to stay there and work for about three years but as I left my boyfriend in São Paulo and my desire to study at University grew up, I decided to go back when I completed one and a half year of a hard work in a factory called Hamamatsu Gasket.

My sister and my Japanese boss

I made my account in Japan to invest in my study and I decided to study English at the University after some talks with a friend who was graduated in Modern Language and Literature at UNESP in São Paulo. But the worst thing was to choose between live with my whole family in Japan or go to Brazil and follow my dream “alone”.

MY FIRST EXPERIENCE IN AN ENGLISH COURSE

In 2000 I came back to Brazil and I concluded that the best thing to do was to follow my boyfriend who entered at UFMG in Belo Horizonte- Minas Gerais to take the “Belas-Artes” course. Then, I came here and started my studies at Promove to try the UFMG “vestibular”.

Throughout this year I took the CENEX – FALE course of English (basic I and II), and I really enjoy this course because it was a good opportunity to feel the University atmosphere and also to be sure of my choice, at that time I reinforced my desire to be graduated in English at FALE.

The CENEX English course is a course provided by FALE-UFMG and its language teachers are undergraduate students of FALE who were finishing their course and preparing themselves to be foreign language teachers after their graduation. With this course I could experience another kind of English method, which was based on Communicative approach that has principles such as the ones summarized by Finocchiaro and Brumfit (1983: 91-3): “meaning is paramount; contextualization is a basic premise; language learning is learning to communicate; effective communication is sought; attempts to communicate may be encouraged from the very beginning; communicative competence is the desired goal; linguists variation is a central concept in materials and methodology; sequencing is determined by any consideration of content, function or meaning that maintains interests; language is created by the individual through trial and error; fluency and acceptable language are the primary goals; accuracy is judged not in the abstract but in context; and intrinsic motivation will spring from an interest in what is being communicated by the language”.

I was very interested in learning English in this classroom environment because for the first time I could see how effective could be a real language learning with all the concerns it needs.

I used in this course my first English book which was “English File” published by Oxford University Press . As we know a book could be a very good stimulus in learning in general.

Sample of the new version of English File

ENGLISH AT UNIVERSITY

Fortunately, I pass in the exam and started to study at FALE - UFMG in the first semester of 2001, and I did not continue my CENEX language course. My lack of a good proficiency in English started to show me that I needed more English background to continue my degree course. I took the three subjects of Integrated Skills but my final grades were very lower than the expected, after the first impressions of the University I myself concluded that if I can not improve my English proficiency I won’t be able to continue this course principally because I was in time to take the literary subjects and also the linguistics ones, and it would be very frustrated if I could not follow my classmates in terms of English skills.

In my first subjects of English, the three Integrated Skills subjects, I used this book:

This book was very important for me because brought motivation with some contemporary themes for adult learners. After that I started to study by myself trying to improve my language skills. To do this I used grammars based books such as “Advanced Grammar in Use” and “Advanced Language Practice”, but I perceived that I could not improve my English skills just studying alone I came to a conclusion that I should find another way for it.

In 2002 I was part of the Cointer project at UFMG called Programa Sem Fronteiras and then I accepted a British girl to live with me for three months. She was taking a Portuguese course at CENEX but she could not take subjects in the degree course because at that time the University was in a striking period. It was a very good experience but I could not improve my English with her because she wanted to learn Portuguese with me.

ENGLISH IN JAPAN

In 2003 I decided to stop my degree course for two semesters to make some money in Japan working in a factory again to afford a private experience abroad such as an interchange program. I worked hard for ten months at the same factory of my first experience in Japan. Throughout this year I took private English classes with a New Zealand teacher to prepare myself to go abroad. It was a small class with four students; we are two Brazilians girls, a Chinese girl and a Japanese boy, a kind of multicultural class which has the same premise of communicative learning.

As I perceived in Japan, the English knowledge of Japanese people is very good but they have some problems with pronunciation, principally because the peculiar Japanese phonology.

Here I put an example of the Japanese pronunciation of English:

Hisa talks about what bothers her in Japan:

PLAY AUDIO

In my private English classes we used the book “Side by Side” of Longman Publisher that is a dynamic, with all skills program that integrates conversation practice, reading, writing, and listening, and we also used some extra materials such as articles from magazines and newspapers, excerpts from literary books and also review of films.

After a long search on internet sources about places and schools around the world for English learning (http://www.englishinbritain.co.uk/ , http://www.britishcouncil.org/ , http://www.learnenglish.org.uk/) I chose go to Manchester – England to take an intensive English course.

ENGLISH IN MANCHESTER

I went to England in January 2004 and stay the whole month studying in Manchester City and living with a host family, it was a great experience and helped me a lot to improve my English. I know that one month studying English is not sufficient to be very good on it, but it made a highly difference in my English skills.

I took the intensive general English course for four weeks in the Manchester Academy of English. After a short exam in the first day at this course I was put in an advanced class with people from different countries and it makes me talk a lot without fear of make mistakes. I felt very comfortable in this course because I could perceive that my problems in English were similar of those of some other people and we were there to solve them and also to have an experience in a real environment.

The big problem for me in England was the English accent that differs depending on the region in England you are. In Manchester there is a slightly different accent from other regions’ accents I heard before, but it was also a challenge for me.

This is an example of the Manchester English accent:

Matt talks about Manchester.

PLAY AUDIO

When I returned to Japan a friend of mine, who was a journalist make an interview with me and other students who had learning English abroad to write an article and publish it in a magazine. Here you can read the full article in Portuguese called “Na Terra da Rainha”:

http://www.alphanet.ne.jp/publique/web/cgi/cgilua.exe/sys/start.htm?infoid=56&query=simple&search%5Fby%5Fauthorname=all&search%5Fby%5Ffield=tax&search%5Fby%5Fheadline=false&search%5Fby%5Fkeywords=any&search%5Fby%5Fpriority=all&search%5Fby%5Fsection=all&search%5Fby%5Fstate=all&search%5Ftext%5Foptions=all&sid=29&text=Luciana+Tuzino&x=6&y=3

ENGLISH AT UNIVERSITY AGAIN

When I came back to Brazil I was ready to continue my degree course. In my fifth, sixth and seventh semesters at the University I really enjoyed all the subjects, principally the ones about English Literature.

At this semester, my last semester at the University, I am taking an online course with Vera Menezes called Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) that helps me a lot with my English Learning, but now a more specific kind of learning: I am learning to be an English teacher.

Now, I’m also doing a research about a Japanese Canadian writer called Joy Kogawa with the professor Sandra de Almeida Goulart and it is my real prize for all my efforts about my English language acquisition.

FINAL CONCLUSIONS

I know that the way I studied English was not a “normal” one, or a sequential one like some people do in private English courses, but my English knowledge was built up as an “art-craft” with some different experiences and English accents.

At first I was very annoyed with my crazy way of life, I always thought about where I could go doing things like these, for instance trying to complete a puzzle with my experiences to build something better. But now I’m finishing my degree course with a similar question of my adolescent times: “to be or not to be [a good English teacher], that is [my] question…”