How I have  learned English“Everything has a beginning, and my

English learning was like this...”

 

By Vanessa C. Rodrigues Bohn

 

 

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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 1999, in fact I was very young and I did not studied so hard to take the UFMG exams, so I did not pass in the college entrance exam, I remember that my best grade was in English test, I got 14 points, but it was not enough, I needed to get good grades in almost subjects. I remember that everybody said: “Don’t worry, next year you can try again!” I had this aim to pass at UFMG and to develop more my knowledge about English language.

 

      

 

 

A dream becomes a goal when action is taken toward its achievement.

-Bo Bennett

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.

 

 

The difference between school and life? In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson.

Tom Bodett

 

 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 Americana-NCA in 2003-2004. I can tell you that at NCA I could develop much more my teaching skills, because my coordinator gave me support to me, especially to prepare my classes and make some extra activities to be taught in classrooms. My students were nice and of course I had some little problems with some of them, because one or two students did not accept the class approach and they wanted to learn only Grammar. I used to call these students grammar addicted .Although I had explained them about the approach used at school, which is Communicative Approach, they did not understand it.

  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