“Everything
has a beginning, and my
English learning
was like this...”
By Vanessa C. Rodrigues Bohn
|
y first contact with
English happened in 1996, when I was in 7th grade at Elementary School. I began study English through
my godfather incentive, he said to my mother that it would be very important to know another language in the future
, so my mother enrolled me in an English course called ICBEU in that same year.
Before I start talking about this period, I will make a kind of flashback related to my
childhood. During my childhood, I used to watch cartoons, like “The Pink
Panther”, “Tom & Jerry” and Disney cartoons, especially Donald
Duck cartoon. There were some words in English in these cartoons,
especially the story’s title. These things called my attention because I wanted
to know their meanings.
Although I was very young,
I knew that English language was by myside, because there are some candies
which their names are written in English, especially their flavors. And I used
to read it and after I tried to memorize them to say to my mother or to my
friends this sentence: “I know how to say morango in English” or another fruit.
Another event that every child learns is the numbers from one to ten. Of course
I didn’t have a good pronunciation, in fact it was bad one, but I spoke and my
mother said: “oh, my girl is speaking English, It’s so cute!”
From 10 to 16 years old, I
used to listen music from famous bands, such as Back Street Boys and all the
kinds of “boys band” Yes ,it’s true, I listened and I still have three Cds from Back Street Boys and N’Sync. Oh, my favorite band was Roxette and I still heard their songs. My
favorite song is “listen to your heart” I learned a lot listening it; I think
this is a nice tool to enrich the vocabulary.
Backing to my English
course time, I remember perfectly my first day. The class was small, only five
students and it was good, because we were very close and we became good
friends. I also remember that when I had some doubts I used to raise my hand.
Although many students don’t do this because they think that their classmates
will laugh at them, I didn’t have this problem.
When the teacher finished one chapter, she
gave us a song activity. I loved it, and as I have already mentioned, I could
learn a lot listening songs. Starting from these classes I began to collect all
lyrics and I created a notebook with these lyrics.
This is my notebook
I also had English classes
at school, I studied at Military School of Minas Gerais, and I loved the
classes there because it looked like an English course, and as every student
complains about English classes at high
school I could not complain about it, because I had excellent
teachers and they forced us to speak in English during the classes. Nowadays
one of my ex-teachers become a friend of mine, she is always helping me to
improve my teacher career.
During those times I needed to take a decision
to choose which course I would take at university. It was funny because all my
friends got surprised when I said to them my decision to do Languages. They
were surprised because they thought I would study Physics Education, well I
love sports, but it is a hobby. Who knows in the future I can take this
course!!
I graduated at High School
in
A dream becomes a goal when action is taken toward its achievement.
I tried the college
entrance exam in 2000-2001 and one more time I failed in Mathematics and
Physics. Can you image what did I think about myself?? I thought that I was not
good enough to study at UFMG, although in that time I enrolled myself in a
course, I studied but it was not my time. Some people say that we need lucky,
but in those times I was not mature enough and I realized that we need to join
lucky and maturity. And I was learning with my mistakes.
My mother helped me a lot
paying my extra courses, buying some books and you know that English books are
not cheap. For this reason, I realized that I needed to do something for her.
Then she enrolled me at Carrier in 2001 and I said to her: “this is my last
course because next year I will be studying at FALE”. What I said come true;
(finally) I passed at UFMG. I used to stay up until two o’clock studying, I
also read some texts aloud and I used to explain to my mother some historical
events, just to check if I had learned.
When I saw my name and my
friend’s name in the final classification, I called to tell him that he also
had passed; we started laughing, crying I only wanted to celebrate my victory. It was a beautiful day. I said that U2 band made this song “Beautiful
day” especially for me.
Everything was new in the
academic life; at the beginning I got a little confused in terms of what subject
I could study, because the woman from secretary office gave me a grid which
contained all the subjects since the first levels until the last one. But I
think this is normal for a freshman.
I started teaching when I was in my third period. I taught in a Pré-Vestibular course and
for me it was a great experience, I could put all the theories related with
language teaching into practice, besides I had a nice relationship among my
students and they always said “ Vanessa, you look so young to be an English
teacher”. Well in fact I was young but I needed to get a job experience, in
other words, to get experience in classrooms.
After that I made an interview in another school and I began to teach at
Núcleo de Cultura
My period at NCA finished in
2005 and I stayed the first semester “jobless”. But during this period I took a
Web Design class. You can image that it is a course totally different from
mine, but I must confess I love Internet and computers. I am building a site
called “English 2u Idioms” and I want to join not only my English
teaching experience but also my computer knowledge to build a site for Foreign
Language Speakers, especially for Brazilian speakers.
During the first semester of 2005 I took a class which opened a window
for my academic development. I took “Material Development” class whose
Professor was Vera Menezes. During those classes I learned
how to create materials according to Communicative Approach and fortunately at
the end of that semester, Professor Vera called me to work with her in her
project. It has been a great experience for me, but it is not an easy work I
need to read many books about theories of Second Language Acquisition to
improve my knowledge in this field.
After I graduate at College I want study more about Applied Linguistics
field and Computer Assisted language Learning – CALL. I want to become not an
English teacher but “the” English teacher, who will be able to identify
students’ difficulties and help them to achieve their goals in English
learning.
To be continued…
Do you have any suggestions or comments? Please contact me by vaenglish@gmail.com