My personal experience as a Second Language Learner of the English Language

I was born in Brazil, in a house where no English or any other languages were ever spoken. I came to study English in a public school by the age of 11 and during my very first year as a language learner, I fell in love with the subject. I remember how happy I was when I memorized all the numbers in English and how successful and accomplishing it was to me when I was able to say all the colors while I was coming back from school. It was really joyful to be best in my language class, even though, nobody spoke English out of the classroom.

My following years as a student of English were not as nice, though. I had this really horrible teacher named Nice and all I could do in her class was to watch her say a lot of words in Portuguese about the functions concerning the auxiliary verb “to do”. I was really confused in her class and I recall having lots of very difficult times at home while I struggled to learn a little bit of grammar. That teacher taught English me for 3 years, three years of hateful English classes.

At my first year in high school things changed. I had a new teacher and I was really excited when I got to speak a little English with him. My new teacher was nice and tried to be as dynamic as possible. This way, he encouraged me to study English in a language school where I would have the chance to better my performance as a speaker.

The Following year I entered “Centro de Línguas” as an “English 5” student. It was really hard for me for I had never studied English in a communicative environment before, and I had a lot of problems with pronunciation (I couldn’t distinguish the difference between “teacher” and “t-shirt”, for instance). However, by the end of the first semester I could manage to be a student within the average and not to be the butt of my friend’s jokes and by the end of the year I was the best student in the class, which I kept being until I got graduated.

Now here it comes one of the most important happenings in my life: after I finished high school I went to the USA under a program sponsored by the government of the United States of America! It was called “Youth Ambassadors” and it provided me the chance to live with an American host family in the State of Ohio and to have a trip to Washington D.C.. This was a very nice opportunity to me; because besides getting to know another country, going overseas made me feel like I really could speak English.

All these nice experiences with the English Language helped me shape myself as a Brazilian/English speaker and, in order not to forget how to speak the language I so loved, I decided to be a teacher and enter a “Letras” course. I also worked as an English teacher in an English school for one year and a half and in a UFG’s project called “Centro de Línguas” for one semester. Due to my two jobs I learned a lot of English, becoming a much better speaker and getting sure I would like to be a teacher for as long as I can.

Up to now, my life as an English/Portuguese-speaking Brazilian has been it. This week, on the 13th (Friday the 13th O.O) I’ll be travelling abroad again under a Capes/Fipse program, hoping to improve my English and to have loads of fun!

( Ps: I wrote this text as an English assignment for my class with Dilys at Letras, as I found the text interesting i decided to post it =D)

Keep on accessing my Blog for more boring things about me! =D