Nome: Lidiane Luiza da Cunha
Idade: 21 anos
Escolaridade: superior incompleto - Letras
Tempo de aprendizagem: 3 anos
My learning history
I first got in touch with English at high junior school. I loved it by the first time because it was a challenge as well as fun to learn a foreign language. My first teacher was fond of the Beatles; then, she used to bring their lyrics and songs to class. However, as the school was public and did not have material neither facility for helping her, our classes were most of the time drillings on grammar activities. Also, we did not speak neither interact with each other in class. Our vocabulary was very much controlled, that is, the activities had basically the same words, the same verbs to repeat. I learned a very limited range of vocabulary and the grammar was mainly the present continuous and simple present. Besides, I remember that I had no idea that I could practice by myself or with other friends. I only studied for the tests without any communicative purpose. The aim of most of the tests and activities were to analyze language structure, a language completely fragmented.
At high school the only thing that really changed at English teaching was the content. The method remained the same: repetition of decontextualized sentences, drilling activities, no emphasis on the communicative purpose that language carries, only its structure. Because of that, most of my classmates complained a lot, which made the classes more boring. On the other side, as learner I tried to supply these failures in teaching by studying by myself. I used to record songs, copy the lyric to practice pronunciation, watch lots of films in English paying attention on the native pronunciation as well as on the subtitles. As I was really motivated to learn it, I did my best although I did not have money to pay a private course at that time. Only in the third grade of school, my family saved some money and afforded a year-private-course for my sister and me. The book we used was completely based on audiolingualism approach, but I can say that it increased more vocabulary, my knowledge in grammar; moreover, my reading and writing abilities developed since I had to write and interpret a lot of texts. At this time, I continued studying by myself, much more than ever because I had more access to materials. My teacher used to lend me extra books for reading just by pleasure and I practiced a lot of my English talking to myself, but I could not talk to somebody else, because I was always afraid of make mistakes in pronunciation and very insecure.
At the university, things changed completely. The professor explained us that we also had to collect materials, practice lot of listening activities besides the ones we had to practice in class. The interaction in class motivated me and most of the students to talk a lot and the more we used to speak, the more we learned in terms of vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, etc. She also advised us to leave grammar activities to do at home and bring doubts to class. At this time I was looking for other people to practice my speaking and listening skills outside class. I was still very shy to speak, because I was afraid of making mistakes when talking to people I did not know. But in two years I got some confidence to break into my personal limits to speak. I read a lot at Literature classes, which helped me to increase my vocabulary, my ability to interpretation of very difficult texts. Outside class, I researched a lot about techniques of learning acquisition and even teaching since I was already teaching at a private school by that time. Last year I joined a project in English literature as “bolsista” with Professor Sandra Goulart. I research postmodern women writing, especially Canadian literature and I love what I do. I can say that involving myself in this project, as an extra academic activity, has caused me grow not only professionally but also personally because I get involve with very nice people who share their knowledge with me and make me work really hard. Interacting with my other colleagues in this research is very nice and as we work collaboratively we learn a lot with each other. And this is my experience up to now. I became more interested in studying literature, more conscious about language structure, and my English fluency increased more.
Analyzing this very complex experience (a consequence of very different teachings and learning strategies) through the communicative approach, I can say that my English learning strategies became more communicative after I joined the college, especially in terms of the development of my functional, sociolinguistic and interactional competence. My cultural competence in English as a foreign language increased through my literature classes and also with my research project. Besides, my strategic competence, that is, my ability to get way of breakdowns in communication, misunderstanding and errors, was also developed through all the language classes (such as syntax, oral expression, phonology) that I took in the previous terms. Concluding, I can say that, all I have learned has a little bit of communicative approach in it, which have helped me a lot to acquire autonomy and confidence. On the other hand, I believe that other strategies based on audiolingualism and other approaches have also had an important part in my language acquisition.
Reference:
http://www.sil.org/lingualinks/LANGUAGELEARNING/OtherResources/GudlnsFrALnggAndCltrLrnngPrgrm/PragmaticAspectsOfCommunicativ.htm