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Date Posted: 12:47:52 06/25/03 Wed
Author: Thiago Rodrigues Costa
Subject: TASK 8

1) Write a narrative telling us your learning history. Include your classroom experiences and all the actions you performed in different contexts in order to learn English.
2. Analyze you learning history according to the communicative principles and tell us if there were some of its characteristics in your learning experience.

My English learning history is not a hard one to narrate. However, it is not that easy either, since I have experienced many different methods practices and activities since I first attended to an English class.

As many other colleagues, I started studying English in high school. My teacher used a method which now I recognize as being very similar to the grammar-translation one. I was a teenager and I remember very well the book we used: Amadeu Marques’ “English”. My teacher always asked us to translate the texts and also the vocabulary exercises at home. I must admit that I acquired a certain knowledge about the language, as well as vocabulary in those times, but I got to the conclusion that if I did not studied by myself I would not learn so much. Since I always liked studying languages, especially English, I used to have a different hobby: I used to read my bilingual dictionary every time I could and also translate the lyrics of songs that I liked in order to increase my vocabulary. I decided to watch films with subtitles instead of seeing those dubbed ones. I confess that now I hate dubbed films, whatever is the original language. I also used to listen to the songs in order to get the pronunciation of some words, what did not work very well because of the different pronunciation some words have in songs. I only took English classes regarding conversation when I attended to English I classes in 2000, when we still used the book “Double Take 2” (does anyone remember it?), and, when I decided to take the replacement test at Cenex they enrolled me in an intermediate IV class on Saturdays in the morning (can you believe it). I had to work with the “Upper Intermediate English File”, which I consider a very boring book (it is my personal point of view) that regards structure rather than communication. I believe that my personal way of learning English was not much related to the communicative premises, since I practically worked with structure and vocabulary and only now I have the opportunity to practice my communicative competence, talking to my colleagues at Fale in English and regarding the importance of communication for an effective learning.

In conclusion, I consider that the first five or six years of my English learning were not much focused on the communicative competence, although I was able to communicate in English in my first classes of English I. I only started focusing on it (unconsciously, I must say) two or three years ago, here, at UFMG. Now, I have many opportunities to develop my communicative competence and, since I do not intend to stop studying English, I still have a lot of time to do so, although I recognize that the first years of my learning were not in vain at all.

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