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Date Posted: 22:20:21 06/26/03 Thu
Author: Igor AL Silva
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.

My learning history begins when I was thirteen years old. It was the first time I had contact with English, because only Spanish was offered in the 5th and 6th grades in the school where I studied. Therefore, when I was in the 7th grade and I was supposed to learn English, I got scared, because that language sounded so weird and I could not understand a word, while most of my classmates already knew it a lot. In this year, I was too shy and I could not participate in the class, since I was afraid of mistaking and sounding ridiculous to my classmates who knew at least a little English.

However, the next year. I changed my position. Somehow that weird language started to get my attention and I realized I had some facility to learn it. From this moment on, I entered in an English course and had good results. Then I decided to studied at Number One and again I was successful. Actually, I think that these courses were a tool for me to develop my skills, but a bit part of my learning processes depended on me. I say it because I’ve always been a very shy person and to afraid of speaking in public. Thus, I just could improve my English, mainly my oral skills, by studying on my own, through songs, movies and cartoons.

At Greenwich Schools, it was easier for me to get good results, since the teaching and learning processes were based on grammar. I studied a lot of rules and tried to internalized it by myself. For instances, I used to get some songs or texts and try to identify the new structures I had just learnt. On the other hand, at Number One, things were a litter harder, as the approach was based on developing conversational skills, through repetition and analogy. Since I was very ashamed to speak and most of time tried to get rid of speaking, my results were good but not as good as at Greenwich. Thus, the solution I found was to hear a lot, mainly movies and songs, and try to repeat them or even know them by heart, so I could get some fluency. Besides, I started to speak with a friend of mine only in English and we helped one another when one of us had difficulty to express something.

I guess that is all concerning my learning process. I can say it is a collection of self-learning and guided-learning.




2. Analyze your learning history according to the communicative principles and tell us if there were some of its characteristics in your learning experience.

When I studied at Greenwich, the communicative principles were not present. Grammar was the main focus of this course. The teachers used to teach the structures and the rules and from some examples we were supposed to apply the new subject and exercises. On the other hand, when I studied at Number One, the communicative principles were more evident, since this course aims to develop one's conversational skill.Though many times it was based on repetition, I can recall that this course tried to present tasks in which real and meaningful situations were used. For instance, I remember a dialogue in which, two ladies talked about relationships: first, a dialogue is introduced; then, we were invited to understand the dialogue and to reproduce it; finally, we were supposed to recreate the dialogue, through free substitution. Besides, the teachers tried to stimulate us and to make us speak among ourselves in order to discuss the topic of the dialogues so we could apprehend what was being taught step-by-step. Moreover, feedback was always given after tasks, allowing us to see our mistakes or right responses so we could improve our English. Finally as much as it was possible, the teachers tried to transmit us their experiences abroad and to insert the tasks in a broader socialcultural context.

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