Tied to English
This time I’m writing a personal reflection of how deeply English influences my life… and very probably yours.
Since I’m 7 English is part of my life. I was launched into the world of this new foreign language by my parents who since I was a little girl were already thinking about a not-to distant future that would demand of me some skills at English.
At that time, I enjoyed it but it was just one more activity among those I had. How could I imagine back in those days that English has arrived to stay with me forever? May sound exaggerate for those who do not share (as we do) this passion but this claim is far from blown-up.
Years at the institute in my town, some years more at teacher training college and more entire years to come surrounded by English. I would better say enthralled by its never- ending collection of words and expressions waiting to be learned. It is this passionate interest that drives our minds to be both consciously and unconsciously in search of interesting language data to be acquired. No matter whether we are watching a movie or listening to some song in the radio or surfing the net, we’re always thinking about English, about an interesting new word or expression nice to be learnt or something interesting to be used in some future lesson.
And the story goes on… We come back from our classes at TT College, practicum or our work and our minds can’t simply stop. We keep up thinking how much we enjoyed the class as well as how much our performances still need to be improved. Our minds are thinking about English round-the-clock.
I don’t know whether it’s healthy or not to be thinking about English almost all the time. Perhaps not, who knows? But I do know that this is something we cannot manage, it simply happens. And once we start thinking about the language, our minds can’t stop. English is so rich, so delicious and so full of things we already don’t know (and perhaps will never do) that it simply grabs our attention all the time.
We are language lovers
who will be tied to English forever.
I feel really identified with what you said Neri. That last phrase is so nice! We don’t usually see our interest in the language in such a positive way. It is true that we are constantly thinking about English, and even if we are not, most likely we are thinking IN English. We may be at times a little bit obsessive, but as long as we turn that obsession into something productive it doesn't have to be a problem at all.
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