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English: From Secondary to Primary

Learning English opened many doors of opportunities to me. As the years passed by, I

have had many experiences with this language that influenced the way I look at it in the different

stages of my life. As a non-native speaker, I understand the process of learning a completely

different language and the challenges that come with it. Reflecting about my English fluency in

the past and present, I can clearly point out some divergences, and these are differences I would

like to have a better understanding about. For that reason, I want to focus my looking into the

process of learning this idiom to comprehend how it has changed with time.

I started learning English when I was still a child. My parents have always made sure to

explain me the importance of knowing other languages for an individual. I do recall that they

used to say that it is important to broaden your horizons in the increasingly globalized world that

we are living in. I was raised being taught that learning different idioms gives us opportunities

that can change our lives. However, I have never stopped to think about what these opportunities

really were. I never realized how big these changes could be until I started my English classes.

My school used to offer foreign language classes once a week so that students could have a basic

knowledge of English and Spanish. Yet, my parents enrolled me in an after-school course so I

could learn English more in depth. It offered me and my peers a broader window of opportunity

because we learned much more than only grammar, as in most language courses back in Brazil,

but we were able to understand the different aspects of the native-speakers culture and history.

This changed the way I looked at this language because I could identify myself with some

characteristics of the culture that the English idiom represented, and this identification is very

important for me when I am learning another language other than my own.

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However, I was still seeing learning English as an obligation and was not mature

enough to understand the purpose of it. Because of that, I was not very motivated to spend my

time learning it. My relationship with English at this point barely existed outside of class. Of

course, I was often in touch with it through social media, music, and television. Still, I was not

making any effort to expand it in a way that my contact with English could be more voluntary

then obligatory. Fortunately, this changed with time. My parents noticed that I was not very

interested in learning English and started to think if they could do something to change that.

Therefore, they decided to provide me with one experience that changed my life forever: an

exchange program to United States, specifically Los Angeles, California, where I went by myself

to a university to take English classes. This gave me the opportunity not only to practice and

improve my English but also to experience the language, something I had never done before. For

the first time ever, I understood how powerful knowing to speak another language other than

your own could be. Coming to the United States and being able to communicate with native

speakers and to learn about their culture by living it was when I finally got motivated to learn

English.

Although I graduated from my English course a few months after that, I still felt that I

needed to keep in contact with that language as much as I could. I was finally making efforts to

improve my fluency by trying to include it in my routine. I decided to shift the activities that I

used to do in my free time from Portuguese to English, which means, that I stopped watching

Brazilian T.V. series and started to watch American ones, and also became addicted to some

YouTube celebrities from the United States and Australia. This way, I forced English into my

life in a way that it was not exhausting, but fun. Owing to that fact, as time passed by, I became

even closer to English in my daily life. However, this was a very complicated time because I was
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a junior in high school, so I had too many other responsibilities and I did not have time and

disposition to study an extra subject. Therefore, even though I wanted to increase my

involvement with the subject, I could not put as much effort as I wanted to. This was a very

stressful year because it was the time when I needed to decide which universities I wanted to

apply to and of course study for that to happen. Having all of that in mind, my father gave me the

idea of thinking about my future by combining my obligations, hobbies, and abilities altogether.

I thought that was great. I could combine de obligation of graduating in college, with the hobby

of travelling and going to different places, and my ability to speak English. Therefore, I decided

that I should apply for universities out of my country, in particular, the United States, because I

already had the knowledge of their main language and it is not so far from my home country,

Brazil. This was the first time that I saw for myself the opportunities that knowing English gave

me, such as the experience of completing my college-level studies in the U.S.

After evaluating all the facts and ideas, it was time to decide where I wanted to apply to. I

spent all the time I could looking for universities that could meet my need and limitations. My

parents are not fluent in English so I had to do everything by myself. The only thing that they

helped me with was with what involved money, that is playing the application fees and setting a

budget for what they could pay for tuition and living costs. Therefore, I made a list with the ones

I preferred and completed all the application for four schools throughout the United States. The

processes of completing my applications were harder than I expected. I was not used to the

vocabulary neither to the academic terms. However, I was determined to study abroad, so I spent

a lot of my free time doing research, not only to have a better understanding of how the

application process in the United States worked but also to be able to comprehend the academic

vocabulary that was being used. It was not long until I received my acceptance letters and that I
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decided to come to the University of Central Florida to study. For that reason, I needed to

become as fluent in the language as possible, so I could get to the university and do not have to

struggle more than necessary. At this point, my English use went from infrequently to daily, and

from optional to obligatory. Studying this language was not more something I would do because

I wanted to, but because I needed to. However, I changed the focus of what I was studying, going

from a conversational method to a more academic and theatrical one, trying to get myself used to

what I would face inside the classrooms in college. Definitely, it was not easy because I was still

in school, so I had to conciliate my time between obligations to graduate and studying that

language myself, though English websites, academic books and even internet videos.

Nevertheless, this was the time of my life when I started to get more fluent as ever before. This

was helping me to expend my English in an enormous way and I was not even able recognizing

the change at the time. But as days, weeks and months passed by, I would see a real

improvement in my fluency.

I was scared, very scared to be honest. As the time to come to the U.S. was getting closer,

I was getting more nervous. I would spend my time reading articles about how to prepare for

college, how it is like to move to university, and even the UCF website, just to get used to the

terms that I should know before getting here. I needed to be comfortable with English because

from now on it would be my first language. Although I already knew how to read, write and

speak, being fluent means much more than that, is also working, studying and thinking, basically

functioning with all your capability in that language. Having that in mind, what I was most afraid

of in all the process of moving to the United States was, with no doubts, my fluency. It did not

matter how many years I have been studying English. Preparing to change my whole life to this

idiom was not easy. I have never taken an academic course other than grammar and composition
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in English before coming college, so I was terrified with the idea of taking specific classes to my

major in this language. So, after graduating in high school, I had some months free of big

obligations, and I spend a lot of this time at home studying, using the same materials and

methods, because I thought it was working like that. Thus, I did my best to get my English ready

to become my first language.

When the day to move to the United States had finally arrived, I was terrified, but also

really excited. From that point on, it was time to build a whole new life. I had to be ready to step

out of my comfort zone because I would not be able to have the comfort of speaking Portuguese

all the time anymore. I knew that I had done my best to become as fluent as possible. However,

the mix of emotions felt because I was moving to a new country alone, destroyed my confidence.

My first days here at UCF were difficult, mainly because I was seeing myself as inferior to all

other students. Even though my English was considered fluent, I thought that the domestic

students were better than me and that I was not good enough to be here. This was a very hard

time in my life. I was losing all my confidence. Because of that, I decided to talk to the academic

director of the Global UCF program, Dr. Olga Bedoya, looking forward to finding some comfort

because she had been through the same experience when she moved from Colombia to the U.S.

In that conversation, she told me something that I will never forget: what really matters is what

you have to say, not how you say it. She also told me about her experience with changing her

first language from Spanish to English. Although she moved to the United States years ago, and

English has been her first language for a long time now, she still makes some mistakes. After

talking to her, I was able to understand that it is ok to make mistakes and that I am not inferior

because English was not always my first language throughout my childhood.

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Finally, I can say that my I treat this language almost as my native one. I know that I do

possess a fluency as an American, of course, but I am very comfortable with mine. I own this

fact to the opportunities that the university environment provided me to practice English, inside

and outside of the classrooms. I can see now what Aristotle meant when he said we learn by

doing. By putting all the English Ive learned in practice, I was able to improve my fluency in a

way I was never been able to before. I still do not know every single word or the meaning of

everything. I admit that I searched online for many words while I was writing this, but I

appreciate the effort I made to get to this point.