My English learning history
By Flávia Cristina de Souza
I can clearly remember the day of my first English class: I was about
nine years old and I studied in a private school. One day our supervisor told
us “you’re going to have English classes!!!”.
At the time, it wasn’t as common for children to have English classes
from the time they’re in kindergarten as it is in many schools today, so
it was really new for me. That specific day I learned the English words for the
basic colors.
At that time, in 1992, my younger sister had a T-shirt with the
Beatles’ lyric , “Lucy in the
sky of diamonds”, and I said “You know,
if I take this T-shirt to my English teacher… I bet she can translate
everything!” Now, thinking back on such a simple English phrase,
it’s really funny! (Listen to
the song here).
Even though I remember that I was too excited about studying English, I
can’t remember the specific details of any other early English class.
When I was eleven, I moved to another school and I used to study English
from a book with a yellow cover (if I’m not wrong, this book is called
“Practical English Course”) and I learned how to sing my first song
in the English language, “Ten little
Indian boys”
When I was twelve, I became very interested in music. A large portion of
my interest in learning English came from English songs, especially the ones
from Alanis
Morissete’s album “Jagged Little
Pill”.
The song “Ironic”
was one my favorites at that time. Actually, I used to know how to sing almost
all of her songs by heart. It wasn’t so easy to get the lyrics because we
had to buy magazines that used to publish this kind of stuff. Nowadays
everybody can access Internet from everywhere, and there are lots of sites in
which anyone can easily get many lyrics.
Then I continued studying English at school, but it ended up being not
that great because people didn’t have the same language level. Some
students hated the English language while other students just loved it. Some
thought it was impossible to learn, while others really wanted to learn yet
they couldn’t afford an English course. Of course there were such good
students just because they were pretty interested or because they were studying
in a private language institute.
When I was sixteen, my mother asked me a question: “Flávia, what if you started studying English?
I’ve got a proposal at my job in which every employee or their relatives
can study English at Wizard Idiomas with a nice discount”, and I just
answered “Yeah! It’s really nice.. Why not?”
Then I called there and did a placement test. I could have chosen
between basic two or three, but I decided to start from the basic 2 because I
preferred to repeat some subjects instead of missing some details I’ve
already forgotten.
I studied at Wizard for 2 years. I remember that I was very excited
about their method because I really thought I was learning the language. When I
was studying the Present Perfect
Tense, I decided to give up studying there because I was preparing for the
entering exams for UFMG, and I imagined that studying just at the
preparatory course for the vestibular was enough. The result was that I passed
the UFMG entering exams, but my grade in the English test was awful: thirty
marks in a hundred-mark test. At this point, I realized that I wasn’t
that good in grammar as I imagined. Even with a terrible grade, I didn’t
give up the idea of starting studying the first subject in English at UFMG
“Integrated Skills I”, although it was recommend that people who
had got less than
After my third semester at UFMG, I started working as a monitor at the
private language institute “Inglês & Cia
Idiomas” where I am a teacher today.
At this moment, I’m about to graduate in Letters Course (English
bachelor’s degree), and I intend to get a master’s degree on
Applied Linguistics soon.
I’m sure learning is an endless process and I’ve been
learning very much since I started teaching. I want to study more in order to
get a certificate from
|
A curiosity: when I was studying at
Wizard, I imagined myself being an English teacher because I used to like my
teachers and their classes a lot. However, after having my first class about
the present perfect tense, I was sure that I would never be an English
teacher because I put in my mind that I’d never learn that strange verb
tense. After some time I was more confident about using the present perfect
in my writings, but I just included it in my conversation when I started
giving classes. “I teach the present perfect tense all the time, but
why am I not confident about using it in my speech?” and then this
problem was solved!
|
Now I know everything has changed in my life from the time my mother
suggested me to start studying English. Thanks God she did it!
Click on the image above and watch
a wonderful video which I just love!
