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Date Posted: 08:49:21 06/26/03 Thu
Author: Vanessa Ferreira da Silva
Subject: Task 8

I have been studying English for some years and I intend to keep on learning even more since I am so curious and fascinated about languages in general. Unfortunately, the lack of money was always an obstacle for having access to different idioms.

Before starting studying English in the public school, I tried to learn English by myself at the age of 10. I loved songs sang in English, but I had to find out what the lyrics were telling me. Accordingly, I used a small dictionary several times and made an effort to join the sentences with the purpose of comprehending every song that I used to like. I also tried hard to copy the singer’s pronunciation of words and that helped me on identifying the same words in different songs.

I was in the 7th grade when I have my first formal English class. Although I was so excited about really studying English, I got somehow disappointed when I was told that the teacher would work just with grammar, reading and a little writing. Luckily, the teacher aimed to do more. She developed interesting projects, worked with pronunciation, used a lot of games, songs and videos. Her classes were nice, but something was missing for me. I did not want just to repeat words and sentences. I wanted to really speak English. The teacher used to ask us our opinion about a subject but comments were always in Portuguese. I wanted more.

I continued studying by myself and at school, until I got a wonderful opportunity: I started working as a receptionist in private language school. I could study for free as I was an employee there. I took a three years course there and, in my opinion, it had a lot to do with the communicative approach. Classes were very communicative and student-centered; varied materials were applied; there was a lot of interaction - we were usually encouraged to express our point of view and give personal exemplification; the purpose of the course and activities used were definitely very well clarified; we learned variations of the language- accents, British x American English, slangs etc. Another good point was the number of students in class: not more than eight.

In 2000, I entered the college and I improved much more. Here I took one semester course at CENEX, which also followed some of the communicative approach principles, and I took (and I am still taking) disciplines in English. I could not continue studying English in private institutes because I never have enough money for that, as I mentioned before. However, I am still trying to learn something everyday since learning never has its end.

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