Nome: Luciano Santos Valadares
Idade: 25
Escolaridade: 3º grau completo
Tempo de aprendizagem: 13 anos
English started to make part of my life when I was sixteen years old and I had my first English class in the seventh grade of middle school. At that time I started to study at CCAA for one year and after that I studied for five years at Yázigi. During that time I was taking a chemistry technical course at COLTEC, and I had the opportunity to be in touch with the technical terms of that area.
After I graduated from high school, I decided to do an exchange program in order to improve my English and to have an experience abroad, that experience was very good for my career nowadays. In truth, this exchange program totally changed my life. I have no idea of what my life would be if I had not traveled to the United States for one year and three months. I lived in a really tiny city called Falls Church located in the state of Virginia, fifteen minutes from the border of Washington DC. During the program I was a senior in high school and I lived with two American families and one British family. I had a great time, I made a lot of friends and I brought with me a luggage that nobody can arrest.
After I came back from my trip I decided to take the entrance exam at PUC to International Relationships and to Letras at UFMG. At PUC I graduated last July and at UFMG I am going to graduate this semester. My major in Letras is in Spanish, but I decided to take that class to practice my English, mainly the writing and reading skills.
I have been teaching English for 5 years. My first contact with the “communicative approach” occurred in a school located in Betim-MG called Microcamp International. Over there I worked with the books from the series Interchange. For me the Interchange collection is one of the best examples of this approach.
Actually I have been working with other books like Marketing Leader and Management and Marketing, because I am teaching mostly business English. For me the best methodology is the communicative approach. I notice that my pupils learn English much faster and that the books are much more interesting that they used to be.
I myself did not have a good experience learning English while I was studying here in Brazil. I could read and write English extremely well but I started to understand and speak English just after my second month abroad. The method of the schools used to give more importance to the writing and reading skills than to listening and speaking skills.
Nowadays I try to teach my pupils in a different way. I try to teach them using everything that for me was good. And I try not to teach them in a way that it was not good for me. Of course one methodology that it was not good for me maybe can be good for other person but I think that a lot of points I can take as a general
rule.