Nome: SIMONE COUTO GOMES
Idade: 26
Escolaridade: superior incompleto
Tempo de aprendizagem da lingua: não informado
1- Where do I begin, to tell the story of how great English is to me? I love English!
The first contact I actually had with English was when I was one year old. My dad went to England to do his Master’s degree and took the family along and there we lived for a couple of years. I hardly knew Portuguese, let alone English! I learnt very little and I can’t really remember much from those days.
Anyway, some years later, we were off to England again. However, I had recently blown the eight candles on my birthday cake and completed the first year at school – I truly thought I already knew how to read and write Portuguese perfectly. It was Thursday, we took the plane the following day to London where my dad was already waiting for us; the following day we were buying school uniforms (ties, tights, cardigans and black shiny shoes); and on Monday there I was, a little shocked, but composed for my first day at a proper English “Cuddington Primary School”.
Did I know any English? Well, yes I must say I did. In fact, I knew two whole words: “water” and “toilet”. I didn’t understand anything, except for the math and art lessons. I was very shy and self-conscious; I knew I was in a different country and that they did not speak my idiom. Unlike my brother, who’s a couple of years younger and basically talked to everyone in Portuguese, including his best friend who talked back enthusiastically in Korean! At any rate, the other children in my class were genuinely nice to me and always talked a lot to me and made me understand what was going on, as well as the teacher. I was to find out later that though the teacher explained that I came from Brazil, most of my peers thought I was indeed incapable of speaking at all!
Those first months I listened a lot and paid much attention to everything around me, besides following the school’s policy: read at least one book per week with the parents help at home. I don’t know the exact moment I knew I’d mastered English and began talking and writing and understanding and reading just like the other kids – what I do know was that nine months later it was September and time to move to the first year of “Auriol Middle School”. Now people who didn’t know me couldn’t even guess that I wasn’t English, I had blended in just perfectly. And though this was an asset most of the time, people being always interested in knowing more about Brazil and about football; there were every now and then drawbacks to the matter. One time, half way through the year, the science teacher was talking about the amount of water in different food groups and he asked us to draw a cucumber and, though I did try to grasp what a cucumber was from the pictures that were being created, I didn’t really succeed. So I raised my hand and asked him: “Mr. Stevens, could you please explain to me what a cucumber is?” After laughing for about five minutes, he managed to utter: “You don’t know what a cucumber is? How can you not know what a cucumber is?” I didn’t know what to say so I just looked at him for a while, but a friend of mine said: “She’s Brazilian Mr. Stevens. Didn’t you know that?” At what he got rather embarrassed and went over to explain to me in a more teacher-like way.
As time went by I was fonder and fonder of English. I loved creative writing and reading was one of my favourite hobbies – this way I constantly did very well in English classes. Well, by the time four years had gone by and it was time to go back to Brazil, I’d made lots of friends and had put together a big collection of the best books I had already read (unfortunately, my dad only let me bring one hundred of them so I had to leave some behind…)
Back in Brazil, I had an awful time having private Portuguese classes, no creative writing in the 6th grade at school (only argumentative ones), and worst of all, having to watch year in year out English classes at school (mind you, I did learn some grammar. I did try to further my studies in English and went to many schools where they simply said they had no level for me, but that I could teach there! But that wasn’t what I wanted back then. Nonetheless, after a couple of unsuccessful try in Pampulha, we tried our luck at Cultura Inglesa at Savassi. After taking some tests me, my sister and brother were placed in our respective levels. Then, a couple of years later, having had some great teachers, learning at least one new thing every lesson and dedicating myself as much as I could, I took the Proficiency test, which I passed with flying colours. Nonetheless, I was very disappointed, when I went back the following semester to see if there were any other courses I could take, and the manager there said that there weren’t any (not even literature that they used to have), now all I could do was teach.
However, I new better: there was always Letras! As well as the fact that I could start teaching. I was first a teacher at Number One where I stayed for a couple of years, then I went on to teach at Cultura Inglesa where I have been teaching (with great pleasure) for the last six years. As for taking classes at Letras I first took about ten “matérias isoladas”, then I decided to be an “aluna avulsa”. Nevertheless, one day it daunted on me that I really love English and Letras, and that I had to become a proper student there. Therefore, I quit Law School (after three years there), did Vestibular, passed really well placed and am now really grateful with all the decisions I made – I love English, I’ve learnt loads with some of the teachers I’ve had, I love literature and I love every day of my life!!!
2- Being bilingual, I’d say this is the best way of learning a foreign language, though it it somehow a bit psychologically disturbing. Nonetheless, I would say I learnt English very similarly to the way native children learn it, so fluency, pronunciation and understanding are pretty much developed naturally and completely. It would be the case of native-like proficiency in the language, specially if you keep it up when you come back and dedicate yourself to it (I know many cases that children came back to Brazil and simply put English aside and forgot it completely a few years after). I suppose this is the extreme the communicative level can reach, when you are inserted into the language. I was in touch with English from nine to five, then there were the books, television, radio, etc., though we did speak Portuguese at home so as not top substitute one language with another, consequently forgetting the previous one (which is what happens to many children who go through a similar experience.)
As for how English children become literate in England – well, the process starts when they are around five and the way we learn to read and write is by having the word as the key unit of form and meaning, starting from there and slowly moving on to sentences, paragraphs and texts. We learn the word as a whole not paying attention to letters or morphemes, having thus to recognize them at sight (I even remember learning what I considered really difficult words such as “beautiful” and “frock”.) A helpful aid teachers used a lot so that we would all fix the words was through dictations, copying, reading, as well as many tasks and games. Well, I can’t develop much more than that since logically there are very few teachers and texts that I have had which have ever mentioned the bilingual method of learning. I must research deeper into this subject and I’m sure it will be very interesting and useful (specially since I have two private English students who are fifteen but who have lived years abroad, one in the USA and one in
Scotland.)