Amorim 1

English: From Secondary to Primary

Learning English opened many doors of opportunities to me. Therefore, I decided to

look deeper into my relationship with this language and try to understand how it began and how

it has changed throughout 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 defined the

purpose of this paper to analyze my history with the English language.

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 was raised being

taught that learning different idioms gives us opportunities that can change our lives. However, 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, that was not enough, my parents enrolled me in an after-school course

so I could learn English more in deep. And reflecting about that, this course had changed my

perspective of language-learning in many ways. My colleagues and I did not learn only grammar,

as in most language courses back in Brazil, but we were able to understand the different aspects

of the native-speakers, such as culture and history, and this is very important when you are

learning another language other than your own.

However, I was still seeing learning English as an obligation and could not understand the

purpose of it, and because of that, I was not very motived to spend my time learning it. My

relationship with English at this point barely existed after my studying hours. Of course, I was

often in touch with it through social media, music, and television. Still, I was not making any
 Amorim 2

effort to enlarge it in a way that my contact with English could be more voluntary then

obligatory. Fortunately, this changed. 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

decide to provide me with one experience that changed my life forever: an exchange program to

United States, specifically Los Angeles, California. 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. I believe that this was a changing point in my life. 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 making efforts to improve my

fluency by trying to include it in my routine. 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

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. This was a very stressful year because it was the time when

I need 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. Therefore, I decided that I should apply for

universities out of my country, in particular, the United States, because I already knew English

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.

 Amorim 3

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

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 occasional to obligatory. 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.

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

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,

it is also working, studying and thinking, basically functioning with all your capability in that

language. 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 in English before coming college. 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. 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. Thus, I did my best to get my English ready to
 Amorim 4

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, I was building a new life. I had 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 have done my best to become as fluent as possible. However, the mix of

emotions I 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.

Finally, arriving at the present time in the timeline, I can say that my relationship with

English had come to a point where I treat this language almost as my native one. I know that I do

not have its domination 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. As Aristotle said, we learn by doing, and I have to agree
 Amorim 5

with him (The Nicomachean Ethics 1103a.33). By putting all the English I learn 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.

Work Cited

Aristotle, W D. Ross, and Lesley Brown. The Nicomachean Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2009. Print.