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Personal Narrative Final Version

Prof.ª Vera Menezes

Lélio Piancastelli de Siqueira

BRICKS ON THE WALL

I remember listening to Shakespeare’s sonnets, in my oldest sister Maria Teresa’s voice, back when I was about six years old. I had no idea it was Shakespeare, but the sounds were fascinating. My twin sister and I would sit under a desk at which Maria Teresa was studying and repeat those very strange sounds she was uttering while she studied for her Literature exams in college. Maria Teresa knew exactly what she was doing: she wanted us to get an early phonological education in the English language, she confessed years later. The poems, sonnets and other literary pieces by Milton, Dryden, Donne, Marlowe and many other poets sounded funny and absolutely mysterious at the same time. She just didn’t suspect my future life would be deeply affected by that.

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William Shakespeare

Sonnet 18 Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

A few years later, I started studying at a regular course: I was 11 years old when I joined a private English school, very British and very traditional (Curso de Letras Inglesas Mr. Wilson), which gave me a solid structural basis. I studied for 6 years with the competent Mr. Wilson, then took a six-month conversational course and traveled to the USA for a one-year exchange program in Fort Wayne, Indiana. At Homestead High School, I did the senior year from August 1971 to June 1972.

I returned to Brazil in July, 1972, and started preparing myself for the Entrance Examination to the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais . I passed the exams for the School of Economics where I studied for two and a half years. Meanwhile, I was also teaching English at several places, such as Pulp Industries (Cenibra), Medicine School (I participated in the development of the Curso de Inglês D.A.s which grew to about 600 students), Cultura Inglesa and MAI (Modern American Institute).

Music had already made its way into my life, as the great pop and rock’n’roll groups of the 70’s came on the scene. I enjoyed myself and learned a lot by listening to The Beatles, Pink Floyd (the mega hit Another Brick in The Wall will delight your ears!),

Jethro Tull, Genesis, Jefferson Airplane, to name just a few bands, besides appreciating individual singers as famous and good as Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan (for example: try reading the traditional hit the times they are a-changin' and then listen to it here). Do you want to know a bit more about this world famous star?

There’s also Joan Baez, Neil Young, Eric Clapton and many others. The lexicon and the phonology of the English language flowed smoothly into my mind as the guitars gently wept.

In the 80’s, I took part in the launching of another English School named Universitas. This course grew to over 1,000 students and was very successful in town at the time. I stayed there till the mid-80’s when I left on a solo career to teach English to business students in the Telecom Industry (Telemar, Telemig Celular, Oi) and in the Steel Industry (Usiminas). These two sectors became my largest market niches. In the Banking Industry, I taught at Banco do Brasil and Citibank. Besides these main businesses, I also worked in other areas such as the environmental one, whenever I was requested to. I would say this diversification of knowledge areas is what has kept me active as a teacher for so long. The need to study and understand at least enough of each one to interact with my students also kept me alive in the job. I guess I wouldn’t have endured teaching “only” grammar, phonology and the lexicon for so long. The broadened interest areas have kept me away from burning out.

In the early 2000’s, I made up my mind to do another Entrance Examination at UFMG and study at the Faculdade de Letras. I really needed to shake up my life, my teaching concepts, break up the work routine, meet younger people in my competence area, as well as get in touch with competent language professionals like the ones I met at UFMG. Brick by brick, my linguistic competence grew higher and higher throughout the years from both teaching and learning from my dear students.

My course at UFMG has worked fine till now and, five-and-a-half years later, this term, having become a better teacher, having added an invaluable conceptual basis to my praxis, I am bound to finish the under-graduate course. The future, well, it is being planned in the back of my mind. But one thing I know for sure: one must not stop studying and wishing to grow.