Nome: Aparecida dos Santos Silva
Idade: 50 anos
Escolaridade: superior incompleto
Tempo de aprendizagem: 10 anos
My first contact with a foreign language was at school when I started with French instead of English. That was a fascinating experience. Still now I can remember some verbs and some vocabulary. After French, I studied English in high school. I was not a good student and at the end of a term I needed a A++ to pass. I passed and from that time on I became very interested in learning even more.
My objective was to become a bilingual secretary, then I wnt to “secretariado” and to Cel-lep to study English .I stayed there for 14 months. I used to have classes everyday and to spend hours at the Lab doing the repetition drills. It was an Audio-lingual method. After a year I was speaking English and got my first job. I worked as a bilingual secretary for twenty years.
I think that the Audio-lingual was the only method in language learning at that time and in a way it worked with me because it allowed me to achieve my main objective. I needed to communicate with foreign people and write letters. Learning through the Adudio-lingual model is possible to produce a good writing. What I didn’t know was that I really learned the usage not use of English.
The use I believe I learned (I’m still learning) with my bosses and when I went to England for two months. The family I stayed with said I had a good English, but I remember my listening was terrible, sometimes I just pretended I had understood.
After England, I studied only technical English. First I prepared myself to the First Certificate. Preparatory courses are training only. Then I took a three-year-course of translation, which basically teaches how to translate into Potuguese and into English. When I ended the translation course I decided that translation was not my field.
At that time I adopted a two-day baby boy and I quit my job. I had not been unemployed for a long time in fact I was invited to work as a secretary with an American Company. I stayed there for 6 years working just four hours a day. I improved my English a lot because I was working with Americans.
My previous bosses were Swedishes and it is quite different to work with natives and talk on the phone with the United States. When the company closed I had already adpted my second baby then I decided that I was fed up with working, studying, I gave a break.
During a certain time (years) I studied music and Spanish. My experience with Spanish was good because for the first time I think I had a kind of Commicative Approach. The only problem was how it was applied. I could speak Spanish but my teacher refused to use any kind of text book. The classes were very interesting very contextualized but we felt that our learning had some failures. Now I think that she believed she was giving us a communicative course, in fact she really was, but she failed in a way she was not organized enough and got lost in the process. Our learning was so loosen and after sometime we all lost our motivation. Some of us could communicate but the basic of the language was not solid in our heads.
At the music lessons somebody convinced me to go back to English. It was a new battle. I had do learn all over again but not only to communicate - to teach. It was a profitable experience. It is different when you know and you don’t have to explain anything. Teaching is to be prepared do explain. I had to go back to school, and prepared myself for the Michigan certificate. I improved my English a lot. I think languages are in constant changes we always need to be updating.
I taught for two years in a school of English and there I had my experience as a teacher. I did not have any training, any support and I had to use my imagination everyday. Now I can say that I used many of the Communictive Approach features without knowing it existed.
The methods and approaches came into my knowledge after moving to Belo Horizonte, I am from São Paulo. It has been such a wonderful experience to be sdudying at UFMG. I have already attended “Formação de Professores”, “Fundamentos Pedagógicos” and “Prática de Ensino” for which I have produced a little songbook for kids with the help of Promad.
So, I can say that the Audio-lingualism was very important for my beginning I feel like it had organized the structures of the language in my head, I is true that I had to follow a long path to consolidate my learning, but I still have a lot to learn. It never ends. Now I am benefitting from the Communicative Approach and I really hope to be here to learn what comes next.
Looking back, I think I have never stopped studying languages. Music is also a language and I love the melody of all languages.