#5
When I started to study in an English course, many teachers told my parents I had talent for foreign languages and that if I continued studying there, I’d probably be hired as a teacher. I was very proud of myself, because I could see other people in classes didn’t get it as easily as I did, and I really enjoyed studying English, had many learning opportunities with songs and in the regular school.
But when I was older and wasn’t in the course anymore, I begun to lost the fluency and the vocabulary I had when I was younger. That was shocking, ‘cause I still wanted to be a teacher someday, and specially, after graduating, to be a translator. I’d like to be able to watch movies without subtitles (so I could see the ones we don’t have inBrazil
That was when I decided to have conversation classes, because I needed to practice. I have to tell you those classes weren’t quite boring in the beginning, because I only cared about English and English and English, but, after some months, observing how stupid sounded the topics annoyed me. The teacher always brought mystical stuff like “do you believe in premonitions/ghosts/destiny?”, and for me the answer was always short, like, “yes” or “no”, didn’t feel comfortable to discuss for 2 hours. I never sub estimated my classmates before, but those classes seemed to bring the most “so last season” subjects of talking and seeing everybody doing children’s activities - Jesus gimme patience!
For me, our current classes have been so pleasant, because we can talk, as we’d talk in our mother language, about real situations, about our lives, experiences, tastes and even the class itself, the grammar etc. When we used that hazard waste wheel, for example, it was interesting, and the same to listen about the ‘hurricane area way of life’. I mean, that would be a normal conversation, with no need to push. So I guess the best way to practice a real English is to have real material, like reading news, interviews, discussing the day-by-day… it will normally occur us constructions we probably won’t be able to make yet so we’ll check them, and then we’ll have learning opportunities, discovering what we’d genuinely say in such a occasion, etc.
When I started to study in an English course, many teachers told my parents I had talent for foreign languages and that if I continued studying there, I’d probably be hired as a teacher. I was very proud of myself, because I could see other people in classes didn’t get it as easily as I did, and I really enjoyed studying English, had many learning opportunities with songs and in the regular school.
But when I was older and wasn’t in the course anymore, I begun to lost the fluency and the vocabulary I had when I was younger. That was shocking, ‘cause I still wanted to be a teacher someday, and specially, after graduating, to be a translator. I’d like to be able to watch movies without subtitles (so I could see the ones we don’t have in
That was when I decided to have conversation classes, because I needed to practice. I have to tell you those classes weren’t quite boring in the beginning, because I only cared about English and English and English, but, after some months, observing how stupid sounded the topics annoyed me. The teacher always brought mystical stuff like “do you believe in premonitions/ghosts/destiny?”, and for me the answer was always short, like, “yes” or “no”, didn’t feel comfortable to discuss for 2 hours. I never sub estimated my classmates before, but those classes seemed to bring the most “so last season” subjects of talking and seeing everybody doing children’s activities - Jesus gimme patience!
For me, our current classes have been so pleasant, because we can talk, as we’d talk in our mother language, about real situations, about our lives, experiences, tastes and even the class itself, the grammar etc. When we used that hazard waste wheel, for example, it was interesting, and the same to listen about the ‘hurricane area way of life’. I mean, that would be a normal conversation, with no need to push. So I guess the best way to practice a real English is to have real material, like reading news, interviews, discussing the day-by-day… it will normally occur us constructions we probably won’t be able to make yet so we’ll check them, and then we’ll have learning opportunities, discovering what we’d genuinely say in such a occasion, etc.
1 comment:
Authentic material is really effective and relevant, for sure.
Let´s see what else we can bring to class, maybe you´ll see something interesting too, on the web. And don´t forget that reading is wonderful, it´s great for language learning in so many ways -fluency, grammar, vocabulary, and so on.
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