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Date Posted: 19:56:19 06/26/03 Thu
Author: Rita Cristina Lopes
Subject: Task8

Vera, from the day I saw that our Task 8 would be our experience in learning English and how could we relate it to the communicative approach, I got worried and I was going to ask you permission to be out of this task because I didn’t have a “formal” education, I was never in an English course. Then I though that I was very lucky because this type of opportunity in acquiring a second language so few people have.

I got married when I was about 20 years old and when I was 24, my husband went to do a Ph.D course in the USA and we stayed there for about 4 years and that’s how I learned. I met so many Brazilian ‘wives’ that even after a few years there didn’t learn anything because in some universities there were so many others Brazilian wives and they were always together talking in Portuguese. Quite a lot of them come back to Brazil with an English that is not enough to teach the very beginners.

I was lucky again because we went to Missouri and there were no more than 2 or 3 Brazilian couples besides us. So I looked for courses I could do to fill my time and I ended up in a college doing a Photography course, another one was about cooking and in a few months I was working as a baby sitter on the weekends and had a job during the week in the photo lab developing films, etc.

So I really didn’t go to an English course but I think I had the genuine communicative experience because I achieved a communicative competence by really living out the principles we have been studying.

I had to see what I wanted to do, look for options available to me, I had to interact in so many ways from looking for a job or course until actually do them - write, listen understand, speak, do tests, ask and offer help, study about the subject of the job or course, understand the natural curiosity people had about a different exotic country, do my homework and take and explain it to the teachers and colleagues, receive my husband friends, take care of my children and so many things I can’t remember now because even in the supermarket where it is supposed that you don’t have to say a thing if you don’t want to, you still have to read all and know what you are buying, etc.

So, Vera, I don’t think my contribution is going to add anything to the course this time but that’s it!!! Abraços.

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