Foreign Language

Learning a foreign language is not an easy thing.   The difficulties commonly encountered by language learners are pronunciation, gripping the meanings of vocabularies correctly, and learning a different culture for enhancing reading comprehension.  
The experience of learning Portuguese was a challenge.   I was exposed to different languages in my life at different ages.   I was always eager to know different languages and to be able to practice them.   The idea of learning Portuguese was very familiar to me but I was worried of how much information I could memorize of the only three lessons that I got the chance to attend during my TESOL program.
Attending the first class was an experience itself. Seeing Mrs. A, who I already knew her, she was not speaking English at all.   She only spoke Portuguese to the class.   I was trying to understand what she was saying, but it wasn’t easy.   Some words seem familiar to the French background that I have and some are just completely new.   Then I concentrated on the teacher’s gestopedia to understand what she was trying to tell us.   She was asking: ‘Qual o sey nomé?’ meaning ‘what’s your name?’ and I had to answer ‘Meu nome é Mireille’ meaning ‘my name is Mireille.’ Then I had to understand and answer questions like how are you? , where are you from and how old are you?   Simple questions but very useful to start a short conversation in Portuguese with a new friend.   To make sure to understand all, I was writing each sentence in Portuguese and in English translation and pronunciation. I was asking the teacher for more clarification using gesture, facial expression and little Portuguese words that I’ve learned in the class.   At the last part of the class, Mrs. A taught us little about the Brazilian culture and cities, she showed us a short movie on the Brazilian cities and the touristic areas of the country.   Then we had to imagine ourselves in one of these cities and we had to make colourful drawing about the scene.   Overall,...