Camila Oliveira, como você aprendeu Inglês? – com áudio

Hi there! Eu convidei a professora Camila Oliveira para nos contar um pouco sobre como ela aprendeu inglês. Provavelmente você já a conhece, além dos artigos semanais para o English, ela também participou do nosso podcast e foi autora de uma das séries mais bacanas que já publicamos aqui: Projeto Aurora Boreal.

Esta é uma ótima oportunidade de praticar o listening e obter alguns insights de como você também pode ter um inglês tão bom quanto o dela. Check it out!

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Transcrição do Áudio

Hello, this is Camila, I’m an English teacher and I am here to answer Alessandro’s question about how I learnt English.

I think it’s a tough question you know, although I’m fluent I guess I’m still learning everyday. Now, I’m going to tell you my history, ok?

Since I was a child I lived in an English-friendly enviroment: although my parents were not a hundrend percent fluent, we were in contact with the language all the time, from music to receiving friends at home, that they met during their trips.

I was a very anxious kid, that used to be very talkative and restless. Oh my god. So, in order to calm me down during trips, my parents used to play some Bob Dylan songs and asked me to read the album cover to follow the lyrics and they would check if I was commiting any mistakes. It was a fun way to shut me up you know and to teach me as well.

As the time went by, I grew up and I started to feel that I needed more, that what my parents had taught me was not enough, I was eager to learn! I wasn’t able to start an English course, so I looked for things by myself, such as watching movies and series with English subtitles, reading comic books and magazines.

When I was fourteen, I started a basic English course, and I found myself so frustrated, because I felt that I could do better than that. I thought that my classmates were not as hardworking as I was, so I dropped school a year later.

During high school I tried to take all the advantages as possible, in order to learn more: I helped my English teacher in exchange of extra material,  I volunteered in charity institutions to teach English for kids and I met some exchange students at school who weren’t able to speak Portuguese.

The contact with the exchange students helped me a lot, because while I was helping them by being an interpreter, they helped me back by improving my English. So, when I was seventeen, I went back to English School to improve my grammar skills.

When I was eighteen then, I was already enrolled at the university and everyday I felt teaching was what I really wanted for life. So I gathered all the money I saved during high school (working as a tutor and selling some beauty products) and paid my first international trip to England where I studied English and worked as a waiter. It was such an amazing experience and that helped me a lot when it comes to be prepared to be a future teacher. Six months later, I went back to Brazil.

I was still eighteen, and since I was an adult already, it was the time that my parents stopped supporting me, so I had to find a job and I had to pay my bills. So it was the time to look for my dream job: being a teacher.

I guess that was when I really improved my English, because it was an everyday contact, and I made a huge effort to be a good professional, because I knew I could make the difference in my students lives.

I’ve been a teacher for about nine years and I’m so glad I made this choice. Meanwhile, I’ve worked in several schools with different methodologies, from English courses to university. I have been trying to improve myself as much as I can, from specializing in courses abroad to changing my mindset from time to time.

Everyone has a story to tell, you know, but we all have two things in common, which is: determination and focus. We can all be average: average human beings, average students. But what… but what makes us different from the average is how much effort is set in order to be the best.

I know I’m not the best, I have flaws and commit mistakes, but I never stand still. And so should you.

Because the best student is not the one who can speak the most accurate English that makes the classmates jealous. The best student is the curious one, the one who always look for answers and find out things by themselves. Those are the ones who chase their dreams and make things happen. There’s always something to learn and I’m even still trying to be that student, you know.

So, that’s my story, I hoped you liked and you enjoyed it. And I see you around. 

Bye bye!

E você, gostou? Confira mais posts da série “como você aprendeu inglês“.

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