English entered in my life when I was 12 years old;
I’ve always been a huge fan of
After listening to the entire CD, I recorded it on an audio cassette and wrote down all the lyrics on my notebook. From that day on, I swore to myself that one day I would be able to comprehend and communicate through English.
Thus,
I remember how hard it was to comprehend certain words in English; at certain
points I felt the need of a good teacher to guide me throughout pronunciation
and oral skills. However, as a self-taught, I created some strategies to make
the process of learning easier: I’d listen to the song and, if there were any
words I didn’t know whether pronunciation and meaning, I’d look it up in an
English dictionary for meaning; and, for pronunciation, I’d repeat that specific
word the tape, pressing REWIND as many times as I judged necessary and I’d try
to pronounce the word the way I was listening to. This was based on Brown’s principle of strategic investment: successful learning of the second language
will be, to a large extent, the result of the learner’s investment of time,
effort, and attention to the second language learning process. Nowadays I see how tedious this process was, but once
I loved music, it was nice back then.
I
expanded my knowledge by studying grammar topics in English at school – I see
now how I disturbed my English teachers asking to translate words/expressions I
saw in some place.
Back
then, it was the boom of internet and through it, I guess, I’d search for
lyrics translation on the web; I’d listen to new songs, kept myself trying
hysterically – for instance –, for one entire afternoon, to pronounce
“correctly” the lyrics for the song “How do you do!” by Roxette.
In
these five initial years of English – which I call honeymoon-, MUSIC influenced
me a lot. Obviously, I didn’t know the enormous complexity of learning a second
language; for me, nothing was so different from Portuguese. I had already
finished high school and I wanted to work with something related to English.
Music had helped so much and I guessed I had something good with me. My friends
would ask me to translate words in small English texts and this contributed
enormously.
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My
first semester professor made me fell in love again and deeper with the
language. In the classes, when the professor introduced the conception of
phonetic symbols, the definition of voiced/voiceless sounds, I thought to
myself how much I already knew and how that new knowledge would contribute to
make me go the extra mile and, as time went by, I realized that my English was
actually good. This feature is based on Merril Swain’s comprehensible output (CO) hypothesis which states that
learning takes place when a learner encounters a gap in his or her linguistic
knowledge of the second language (L2). By noticing this gap, the learner
becomes aware of it and may be able to modify his output so that he learns
something new about the language
This
same professor taught me for two years. I remember the teacher being very
demanding, especially regarding pronunciation and grammar. It seemed tedious at
first, however, the teacher focused on USE and MEANING in grammar aspects and
how this would influence our oral skills in order to communicate better. This aspect is based on meaningful learning
concept: one of Brown’s guidelines for teaching second language:
a)
Meaningful learning: meaningful learning will lead to better long term
retention that rote learning. A good example can be found in several
content-centered approaches to language teaching.
For pronunciation, I recall that the teacher would
give us some texts (In semester ONE, it was about the city of London/ in
semester TWO, it was about Aesop’s fables) and we would retell the plot to the
teacher. In my opinion, the teacher was very
structuralistic, but I loved that because the teacher was very intelligent and
prepared: throughout charts/cards/ exhibition (using visual techniques), the
teacher would explain about technic expressions (as in found in Phonology). The
greatest thing about the teacher was the constant feedback the teacher would
give us; thus, eventually mispronunciations were corrected in a subtle way and
student would feel very comfortable about the learning process. I remember
that, individually, the teacher would comment about our progress throughout the
semester, the things we needed to improve and how to achieve this improvement.
The
way this specific teacher acted and behaved influenced me so much because, of
all teachers I had, that one was doing exactly what I expected from a teacher.
I saw in the teacher a role model and my beliefs
started to be molded back then. I thought to myself about what I could do in
class to motivate my students, how to pass the knowledge to my pupils. For me,
the process of learning/teaching is an exchange and much of that I had from
this teacher.
On
the other hand, in college, I had another teacher who was very smart and
intelligent, nevertheless, in my opinion, way too rude. I mean, the teacher was
an expert with a vast teaching repertoire and plenty of knowledge but, at the
end, students would present the seminars the teacher was supposed to present.
The way this teacher would provide feedback after each seminar – in front of
all students – was terrible for me. The worst part was that, in my seminar, the
teacher said that I’d never become a teacher because my pronunciation was
terrible. I was being challenged and I accepted it: I proved to the teacher –
and to me, as well – that I was capable of being a good professional without
being rude or unkind to my students.
