Transcriber: Lucia Biz Reviewer: sadegh vn
I always liked the English language a lot.
When I was a child,
I remember pretending to be acting like I was talking on the movies,
pretending to be a singer singing their songs,
pretending to be on TV have endorsed conversations on the talk shows.
I like the arts, playing roles, imitating these people speaking English.
One day when I was studying in the second grade,
my teacher knowing I liked the English language very much,
invited me to attend in a presentation in which these students
would sing the famous song by Michael Jackson, “We Are The World”.
I was seven years old,
and the other students were ten, eleven, because they were in another class.
So I remember during the rehearsals,
thinking: “That’s it, that’s it.
I’m going to learn to sing it right.
I’m going to learn the words.
And I’m going to know this and every other song I hear in English by heart.”
As I grew up, still without a computer,
no internet at home,
no network access as in the way today,
I remember putting together the coins,
my parents gave me to buy magazines.
They contained the lyrics of the artists that I liked.
Every day I learned a new song.
Every day I tried to imitate more the way they pronounced the words,
the intonation between them;
all the dance that happened in my mouth of the words,
connecting to each other, you know.
It was simply the most unbelievable thing I had seen.
And each day, I felt more capable of taking a bigger step.
So day after day, I learned to turn these words
and these songs into dialogues,
into conversations and I kept replaying everything in my head
until I thought it was practically the same as original.
By doing things that way, I had only one goal:
“To achieve perfection.”
She speak English in a way that no one will notice
It wasn’t my mother tongue.
So I just practiced,
all these almost obsession with pronouncing words correctly,
paying attention to correct the usage of these items,
necessary for second language developement
or finally taking me to my goal.
I liked English so much that when I grew up,
I got a part time job in a school as a teacher.
So all the effort
to communicate with lightness,
all the years of study led me to this very moment.
One day, I was in my classroom planning classes for the day,
and a native English speaker came in.
A visitor with the principal of the school.
Both said hi.
The principal introduced me as a teacher and passed the baton
so that I could continue there in that conversation, you know,
without any pretense of being anything
but just one of those coffee break conversations.
And the moment I went to answer that person,
I froze.
I just froze, you know.
I didn’t remember anything, nothing I spent years studying,
nothing I pursued all the years of my life.
All the perfection I was looking for was transformed into nervousness,
became my biggest block in that moment.
I had to show someone,
a native English speaker who was born speaking that language,
who said he had year after year who traveled the world,
how much I knew to communicate with it.
What if he doesn’t understand what I’m saying?
What if I use an incorrect term?
So I just stayed there with my paperwork.
I left home devastated that day.
I had already contact with natives when I was younger,
I had already studied for that moment. So what happened?
Why couldn't I indulge in that conversation, you know?
I continued teaching, after all.
I loved and still love what I do.
I feel insecure sometimes,
but nothing compared to the situation to the day I froze.
Today after years of teaching,
after a lot of studying with my students
and observing their behavior in situations similar
to the one that I went through,
I notice that this fear, this uncertainty about
what to say, how to respond,
this insecurity takes them too constantly.
At work when attending meetings,
when replying emails.
Brazil is the country with the most language schools in the world
dedicated to teaching English.
But still, only a small portion of our population speaks in a fluent level.
With the students who come to me,
I realized that it’s not their fault, my fault that the institution’s fault.
But this insecurity, you know, of
the search for speaking perfectly.
Is there something wrong with trying to speak perfectly?
Of course not.
Many people have studied for years and years,
and the search for this perfection depends on some other factors too.
If this individual dedicates time to these studies.
If he studies the grammatical we structure for our conversation.
If he even has knowledge of the spoken slangs in a certain place.
If he had the opportunity to study abroad,
not only to learn the language,
but to experience the culture, you know.
Being interested in pronunciation,
applying mirroring techniques that were the first I had contacted in childhood,
increase vocabulary, you know.
All of these, will make you get where you want
in your final goal,
which is speak perfectly.
If is this what you want? Why not?
But this pursuit of perfection
distracted me from my goal,
and took my focus off
what I was looking for which was to communicate.
You see, I’m here communicating with you in English.
Overcoming my teenage fear.
And you understand me, don't you?
Practice can give us more confidence
by turning the key to the second language.
People tend to think
that learning a new language is something bad,
but it actually opens up the universe of possibilities,
of transformation,
where those who show confidence come out ahead.
Is perfection needed here?
No.
It’s no use if you’d studied in your entire life,
looking for different ways of pronunciation and methods.
If you’ve memorized a very specific vocabulary.
At the time of putting into practice,
your confidence is not aligned.
My perfection process hindered me,
it brought me a block
which only years later,
I managed to get rid of.
So also watching the presses of other people,
but especially my students, I could understand that
with the confidence I had when I was seven years old,
I could talk, show the world my voice,
making mistakes, getting it right,
doing what I believed was perfect.
And what I have to say is
we are the world and we are not perfect.
But we can be if you want.
And if you don’t,
that’s fine too.
Thank you.