Narrativas Coletadas por Carla Reichmann

4. A.R.S.

It all started a long time ago. I was a little boy when I decided to study English. From what I remember I surely wanted to start studying English because of my friends at that time who begun previously their studying. I was ten years old only.
I started my English classes at CCAA at Pedro II Avenue, which is close to my house so I could go and come back on foot with no problems. It was all going nice when suddenly I got sick for two weeks and when I came back to my classes I got desperate due to students were all doing fine some units ahead me and I was understanding completely nothing! I felt like giving up the course at that moment. That’s what I did eventually.
When people ask me about my experiences as an English teacher I always like telling people this story. I don’t remember precisely if it happened on the vacations after I’ve quitted my CCAA’s classes but I’m quite sure it didn’t happen far away from that time. I went to my aunt Detinha’s house at Fortaleza, Ceará, to spend my one-month vacation as I always used to do with my parents at that time. She is a teacher. She makes his house a kind of secondary school for little students who are just beginning their school learning process. I used to stay among the kids as long as I was around their age. But one day I found that I could help my aunt: “why not giving little classes to the boys and girls from what I have learnt? I can also teach them some other information I already know such as colors, nationalities, greetings and so on!” my aunt like the idea… On the other day I was ready to start being an English teacher around my ten or eleven years old. I was so excited! I couldn’t help myself walking around my aunt’s house wondering what colors to show them, what kind of activity I would ask them to do first!
And that’s exactly what happened during the next two weeks after that: I started giving English classes to the kids. I remember my aunt saying that the kids missed those English classes and me. They were very poor kids actually. When would they have ever an opportunity to have English classes again with real purpose on learning a second language? At school? I do doubt it so.
Talking about school, I remember that I started having my English classes at school primarily at 5th grade. How many new emotions were just flourishing in my veins! I was eleven years old, starting to look behind at my childhood and looking forward at my glorious future. I do undoubtedly remember my first school English teacher face: rounded white face, deep brown eyes, nice narrowed nose, very hart-shaped mouth. A beautiful woman indeed. Her name was lost in time though. Since she started her first classes I remember being very excited and happy to be studying English with my roommates. I do remember of bad or common classes but it all looked perfectly that I didn’t even have enough time to think of possible disadvantages her classes had because I was just too focused on my learning process.
During the other grades I remember keeping ahead my English development trying harder to maintain what I have learned and looking always for new vocabulary, structures, cultural information and so. On the other hand I felt most of my friends were just learning English at school languages or other languages as well.
The first time I went to an English school was around my ten years old just like I have mentioned previously. I came back to keep on studying and I never stopped since then. So, I studied two years and a half at CCAA what leaded me to reach my intermediate level of English. The very last semester I studied there I remember that I was starting to feel the need to improve my English in a way I could do and think things the way I was feeling. The Audiolingualism have made me feel more comfortable with internalizing the English I’ve learned so far but it was restricting what I could emerge. Then Yázigi came in.
I first heard of Yázigi language school when I was happily studying at CCAA but my friends were always saying to me that if I went to one of Yázigi’s classes, I’d certainly get interested fast about it and I wouldn’t come back to CCAA. Well, I didn’t hear very much my friends at that time although I really agree with them nowadays due to I love so much Yázigi’s methodology even making me feel like studying deeper the Communicative approach.
So, I went to Yázigi and finished my intermediate English course, continuing the advanced level ending up at the year 2002. I also studied the post-advanced 1, which develops more your skills in the language.
Also in the year 2002 I studied and got the TTC at CCAA. Here comes the question: why did I come back to study at CCAA even trying to get a job there as an English teacher if I don’t like their methodology very much? The simple reason is that I felt that starting to work there as an English teacher would be much more easier than anywhere else. Even more, to start teaching nowadays, you should have experience no matter where and that’s important to anyone’s résumé. Eventually I didn’t get the job there.
My first job as an English teacher was at a PSS entrance preparation course also at 2002. I had only one class with fifteen up to twenty students. Our meetings were only at Saturdays what made me feel very comfortable to keep on studying Psychology (by the way, this was the first major I tried to focus on) and work at the same time. I remember that my students were very uncomfortable with English, on dealing with it because they hated it. Actually they used to say they never ever had an English class in their lives because their teachers were only good on giving them homework and that’s it. No learning actually. Basically I worked with them under the Translation Method. I always brought them one text, worked on one specific grammar point and so on. One Saturday I remember putting them in groups in order to teach them one text. I wanted to know how far they could go alone on their own as far as I wasn’t able to do that because every time I was translating the texts. So, they got together in four groups of four or five people – I cannot remember exactly the number. Eventually they kept on looking at each other like “Do you understand anything?” I asked them what they could get from the text and they just said “Nothing, teacher”. I felt very weak because it made me realize everything or most of what I was explaining during my classes were useless! Then I kept on the Translation Method because I didn’t even know what to do plus the students said they preferred that way we were working before.
On 2004 I started working at Yázigi as an English monitor. That meant I had to work to keep the Resource Center in order so students could take the advantages it offers such as books, magazines, CD-ROMs, PCs, DVDs, and videos. In addition I was also in charge of managing personnel class to students who felt in need of extra explanation on a certain topic. I worked there for five months. I got relieved due to administration contexts. The school I was working in had to close. It was indeed a very good experience because I felt during that moment that studying Psychology was good for me but studying English and giving classes were essential for me.
Recently I tried a Social Project, in which students from public schools all over the neighborhood were looking technician education, i.e., to work in hotels. In order to do so they had to learn some English. I appeared to give such classes to those kids, teenagers and adults. I worked there during the Saturdays as well but at this time there were two crucial different points: I was at that time just like now studying Modern Languages and also I had some previous readings on Vygotsky’s theories. I could this time know how to deal with some specific points on how to perform on different aspects about the Communicative Approach. It’s true that most of Communicative approach techniques are still unknown for me, but those which I have been dealing with recently were OK for me to work in my classes. The main difficulty for me to work in this approach is to know HOW and WHERE to start.
Basically I as an English teacher have an objective: to teach a new grammar structure and new vocabulary. But how to introduce the ideas of Communicative approach into a group of students who have never – most of them – studied English before and, most important, feeling not so much motivated to do so?
The first class I began the discussion of what we were going to learn. They all were very quiet. I remember the first contact I asked to have with them I wanted to know their names, where they live and what they do apart studying. Most of them answered shyly of course. Then I asked them to begin their first activity: write down all the possible English words they know that we use in the Portuguese context. After that they had to make up a story. They were seven groups of around five people each and they had to start a story using at least one of those words in their list. Then, after a moment, they had to pass their paper to the next group so they could keep on the story. After I realized the same sheet of paper has been over the seven groups, I’d ask the groups to finish the story. Later, I asked one of the groups to read the whole story so that we would know what words they got, their meaning in Portuguese and if it was also the same meaning in English. It was pretty hard to work with such big group – around thirty people – but after a while I started to know how to deal nicely with such situation. Students who at the very first beginning felt very shy were at the end of class smiling, interacting, discussing with other students, pointing out what they had agreed or not and so on. For someone who was starting to dialogue with Vygotsky’s theory it was completely overwhelming to feel the class shaping its own forms. I felt like a winner that day.
The next classes I was bringing into the classroom another ways of making them learn and communicate as well in the class: they had to discuss some grammar points about previously in Portuguese then in English to see the basic differences, they had also to cut paper, glue into a Bristol board, compose about a certain topic in which they had been discussing like family situation and so on.