Practice Itself

Hi, I'm learning English and I'd like to share my experience here.

I wrote a post about a content-internalization technique course that helped me memorize texts and also express what I'm learning.

I gathered some courage and decided to show you the video of my prerequisite activity to move on to the next module of the English course Jackson Roger Idiomas.

Here is the text of the activity I put together:

Tell me your experience of learning English.

Hello, everybody! My name is Thiago, Today, I'm going to talk about my experience of learning English. I decided to learn this language because I love it. As a student, I should start with simple conversations as "Good morning, my name is Thiago, nice to meet you, I'm from Brazil and nowadays I am living in Dourados, I have 30 and I'm married but I don't have children yet, I would like to visit the United States and I want to work in a big company". This is it, no big deal, just a simple conversation.

Finally, I'm learning a lot although I'm not fluent yet, I can read a lot of text and speak a little bit. Last but not least, I need to say thank you for Jackson Roger, I really enjoying his classes.

So my farewell message is: believe in yourself, don't give up. You don't get anywhere in life without taking chances, experience isn't something you can buy and no one goes anywhere alone, keep studying is the best way. Thank you all very much!

Here's the video of the text being delivered in an internalized way:

I believe I'm on the right track to English fluency.

Writing process:

I already had plenty of vocabulary ready, and in this activity I couldn't get fancy — at this stage of the course it was just assimilation and pronunciation, no grammar or formal writing yet. I basically played Lego with vocabulary from previous activities, texts I had studied, and a script the teacher gave us. I made up just a tiny bit, and it worked.

Memorization process:

The assignment asked for 150 words. Memorizing the text took a while: I read it many times (15x), then broke it into small sentences. I'd read the first sentence, close my eyes and try to recite what I had just read to check if I had memorized it; if it worked, I moved on. Then I'd read the first and second sentences, close my eyes and try to say only the second sentence from memory; if it was good, I'd move to the third. Then read the first, second, and third — close my eyes and try to recite just the third one — and so on. I broke my text into thirteen sentences. It was a lot of work, but it's what works for me. Sometimes I'd read a sentence and only remember the first word. Reading the steps above sounds easy, but in practice it's another story — it requires patience with yourself, no rushing, no doing it just for the sake of doing it.

Pronunciation process:

To pronounce things correctly, I'd go to YouGlish and WordReference to hear how a word is spoken, then I'd record myself repeating it and listen back to check if it was good or similar to what I heard from a native speaker.

Storytelling process:

Here I used storytelling: I stood in front of the mirror with the text already memorized (or close to it) and told it out loud several times to internalize and express it.

Recording process:

This part was tense. I tried to record the video ten or more times — sometimes I forgot something, mispronounced a word, made noise, or the scene wasn't right. I grabbed my phone, recorded in selfie mode with the front camera, and tried not to look at myself on the screen so I wouldn't lose focus and could keep remembering the text. As I spoke, the text in my head was like those thirteen separate sentences: speak, breathe, think about the next chunk, and keep going.

Result:

Well, you saw the result. I got a TEN, but more important than the grade — and what made me happy — was being able to memorize the text, speak decent English, and break the ice of recording myself and showing the result. Now it's about continuing to improve, learning, and most of all practicing. My listening is really good =)

Anyone can learn and master a language!

Finally:

I'd like to thank Jackson Roger, my English teacher from basic to advanced, who has helped me a lot with his direct and excellent content.

I'd also like to thank my newest English teacher for IT and Business, Giorgi Bastos, who has been doing a great job helping me level up my English in my professional field.