I watched an interview in French with subtitles in Portuguese, so I could listen perfectly to what the person said, but the same day, at French course, as we made a drill with synonym sentences, I could only get their meaning because of the other, but couldn’t really distinct words by listening. I realized the same occurred with a song in English. As it has many electronic distortions, it is too difficult to listen, and even in American Google I wasn’t able to find complete lyrics, every version had something I didn’t believe I heard or something that made no sense to me, but before I read them, I was able to listen what I read in the first one. With other songs or dialogues, before I read them, I couldn’t understand them only by listening, but after reading I could.

I was reading a book these days saying that one of the problems foreigner English speakers have is to predict what is going to be said, that every native can preview a word occurrence at least from the first syllable, if not only by the context. In fact, I think because of the context, though I couldn’t figure out the sentences, I was able to understand this interview (or at least I think so…).

I ask myself if it is possible do develop that prevision ability without living abroad for at least few time. I see my husband’s English improved a lot since he started having meetings and call conferences with Americans everyday and writing them in English all day long, so though he didn’t travel he already had a kind of immersion course, I mean, I can write and read and develop my grammar and my logical thinking in the language, but to listen and to speak is different, because I cannot constantly look up in dictionaries nor clearly notice boundaries. I don’t feel secure about phonetically transcribe yet, for example, because I’m not sure of the pronunciation of many words.