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Date Posted: 13:43:34 06/24/03 Tue
Author: Nanci Augusto da Silva
Subject: Task 8

My learning process can be divide in two phases: the first in the public school and the second here at UFMG.
I began to study English alone, translating words and sentences of songs when I was eleven years old. I didn’t worry with listening or to practice speaking, I only wanted to know the words meaning. My first English classes were in a public school during three years. The methodology adopted by my teachers was the structural method: we studied the structures of sentences, memorized them and vocabulary too. Social context didn’t exist in those classes. We also didn’t have opportunities to practice speaking or listening. Only in the last year of the course a new teacher brought another methodology (I think that was the communicative approach), which was very difficult for us, because we knew only how to complete sentences and not act in situations. It was not a good experience, because my classmates and I realized that we didn’t know anything about English language. We had spent our time. As I said, I began to study English alone and during those time I didn’t improve, because every year was the same story: verb to be, numbers to 1 to 100, ‘what time is it?’ and etc. It was a circle, we always studied the same subjects (except in the last year). After the end of the course at the public school, I didn’t study English during five years. Considering the main characteristics of the communicative methodology, the phase of my learning process was very incomplete. I developed only (and in a bad way) reading and writing; memorization of structures also didn’t help, because at the end of each semester I forgot what I had studied (I recognize that was my lack of interest too).
The second phase of my learning process was better; it began with an elementary course here at FALE, where I had my first contact with the communicative method. I think that during my course the communicative competences were well worked, because the classes had in their majority the communication as their base. The result of these classes is students that learned to act and use the English language in various situations. We also learned some aspects of foreign cultures and the importance to know a foreign language.

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