- Narrativas coletadas por Ana Maria Barcelos -
My Language Learning History
I started learning English in the 5th grade in a public school. It wasn’t very good, so when I was in the 7th grade (1997) a teacher offered me a schoolarship to study at his English Course, named High English Course. I studied there for six months, it was very difficult to my father pay and in that year my father was unemployed.
In 1998 I moved to another course, named One Way English School. It was good because I met people coming from different places, but my teacher sometimes spoke portuguese and I had difficults of listening. In that course we wrote and read more than listened. There was a moment that I decided to listen things in English by music and I brought many CDs. It was a good but didn’t solved my problem.
I decided to do Letras because when I finished my English Course I did conversation at Culture English Course and the boss of this course invited me to teach English for children. I really loved it. I loved to be teacher and it’s the thing that I want to do for the rest of my life.
I thought before coming to UFX that I’d speak English all the time, since the first semester, but it didn’t happened. Now I think it’s happening (this semester), my English Course at University is starting now. I was surprised about that. Many people who don’t know anything in English come here to do English and I don’t know if it’s good because some people who knows something more have to wait for the 5th semester to pratice. I tried to adapt myself to this reallity. I studied at my home and looked for places that i could have more contact with the language. Today I think I found that place. I’m working as a teacher again. I was a trainee at XYZ, YZX and TPX. In that places I improved another skills of different areas like computing, public relationship and telemarketing. Only in these days English is entering at my worklife since I came to X(name of the city). I still need to improve my listening. Unfortunatelly in my job it’s not so necessary, because when you’re teaching for many students that don’t know many things in English and have to do vestibular you have to direct your attention to read and write. It’s the problem of learning English only at school (fundamental and high school).
For people that want to learn English my advice is: Don’t wait to learn English at University. Before, you can learn a little in a English Course (cursinhos) or (if you have money) do an exchange.
