VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, [3], 4 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 12:26:48 06/27/03 Fri
Author: Cássia Scheinbein
Subject: Task 8

THE CLASSROOM
YOUR TASK IS:

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.

It is not an easy job to describe my experiences with english because they started a long time ago. So, I’ll try to divide them in periods which I consider marks of “learning” english.
I started to learn english in school as a regular discipline. I continued it in high school. I also studied english in a private course, until the advanced level. In that time, the method was conservative, it focused on grammar, on reading extra books and repeating dialogues. I used to ask all the doubts I had. I was always very interested.
I had the other period, this after getting my Dentistry degree at the PUCMG, which was completely different. It was not a formal learning at school, but practicing everything I’ve learned. I did some professional training outside Brazil and practiced english for long time as well as other languages. I can say, english was my second language at that time, not considering my mother language. I had many friends from the USA, Europe and I also travelled to many countries where I communicated in english most of the time. I have fluency for that reason.
With the “fashion” of the internet, I started to surf it, with the objective to know people from everywhere in the world, and I had and I still have the opportunity to practice english all the time, so I think, hear, speak, and write in english. It’s natural.
There is the recent period (about 4 years), which is the time I’m studying at the University of Letters in UFMG. I improved english concerning literature and writing. The homeworks, the tasks that were given, allowed me to improve this part specially.
To conclude, I can say so far that, I always liked english, and I had lots of interest to put in practice, to be fluent and to improve it as much as I can.

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 real “learning” according to communicative approach is the practice itself. I used the language in real contexts, experienced all the competences, like communicative, functional, and sociolinguistic competence where I used english in formal and informal ways, when necessary, according to the situation and the context. I had contact with varieties of english of many countries like USA, Australia, New Zealand, England, South Africa and countries where english is teached. My experiences were real and natural. I also add the interactional and cultural competences, as I experienced the direct acquaintance with people of various cultures in several opportunities.
Practicing in real contexts is the best way to improve a language when someone has its basis. In life, we are always learning things, so I consider I used the communicative approach with its principles naturally, in practice and not having consciousness as one academic approach of teaching a language.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]
[ Contact Forum Admin ]

Forum timezone: GMT-8
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.