1. R.L.

My learning process through the years

Languages were always a very important subject for my family. They always had a special worry that each member could understand at least one foreign language as a whole. However, each member of my family studied only what they wanted and until they wanted. I guess I was the one who went farther into English learning.
I do not remember my really first contacts with that language, but I believe that they have begun since I was child. One of the funny facts I remember is to listen to songs from “O Outro” soap-opera soundtrack and try to sing “Coming Around Again”, and “Don’t Get Me Wrong”. Despite singing completely wrong, the fact of seeing my cousins singing them, stimulated me. I was eight, maybe nine years old, but while I pretended I understood those songs, I felt that as the first step to have more and more contact with languages.
Few years later my sister began to study English in Olinda and that was another way to “feel” languages close to me. Sometimes I went to take her, entered Cultura Inglesa and there was another universe. Words such as: “Welcome”, “bathroom”, “open”, etc, made no sense for me until that time, but there were getting closer to me. Sometimes my father traveled to São Paulo and used to bring magazines in English. They also stimulated me to understand English language. At that time, my sister used to remember her lessons with me, and when I began to study English properly in 1991, they helped me a lot!
From 1991 until now I have been having an everlasting summary of discoveries: Songs, singers, Good teachers, bad teachers, a brief trip to Florida, talking to foreign people through Internet, quitting courses, beginning other courses (German and French), joined Literature and Languages course in University, teaching, learning, etc. each one of them should have a special chapter in this composition. However, even being a student of English for more than fifteen years, I feel I still do not know English as I should. Why not? That is what I want to solve during this course.