My Way of Learning English – Angelica Perez
When you are a child and you start to speak, it is easy, because your parents and people close to you are talking in their language all the time, that is why you learn to speak it, and it becomes your native language.
After a few years, school begins, you meet other children speaking the same language and you start to communicate with them that is the way to improve your language; with practice.
I lived in Mexico, where the official language is Spanish and it seemed to be difficult to learn a different language, because everyone around speaks Spanish and you can’t practice well.
In my case I started to learn English when I was 5 years old. At that time I met an uncle who used to live in the US but he had to go back to Mexico. He liked to take me to the park, to the movies, to buy an ice cream, everywhere. And when we went out, he taught me some words in English. I still remember the first words I learned: Pumpkin, lobster, pillow, cat, dog, mom and dad. I really enjoyed his “classes”, although he didn’t teach me grammar, he helped me to discover a new skill.
Everything was perfect, but one day my parents and I moved to another state and I couldn’t see my uncle very often, only on vacation.
However I felt excited to keep learning and I decided to do it by myself. How? Sometimes I don’t know, I started to listen to music, memorize song’s lyrics, watch tv or movies in English, of course. Also, I had a vocabulary notebook with all those words that I didn’t know.
Time went by, and when I was in high school I took English classes at school but they didn’t work to me, because I knew already everything that the professor was teaching us, and of course I always got the best grades. I felt frustrated but glad at the same time; I had a great knowledge, but I wanted to learn more and I couldn’t do it with those poor classes. That’s why I kept using my own method.
When I decided to come to the US, I knew it was going to be a challenge, but I took the risk, and now I can practice cause all I can hear all day long is English, and I believe this is the best way to improve my new language.