My Autobiography (ISRAEL)

   Hello, my name is Israel Almeida and I'm 33 years old. My first contact with English was in mid 1985 when Michael Jackson songs were successful on radio and TV. At that time I was a little child and lived in Rio de Janeiro (I was born there), where Michael hits were successful.

   But my interest started in 1996 when I was doing 5th grade. A classmate loved to speaking some words in English and doing activities. From then on I started to attract by the English language. I remember to rent a videotape to watched the movies with subtitles. It was also at this time that I began to have a preference for American English, just because the influence of the movies that I watched.

   In the early 2000s I started doing the course at Cultura Inglesa. Although I was studying British English, I struggled to always speaking  American English in class. It was a great development that I had doing the course. My vocabulary has expanded and my conversation was very good. I stayed in the course until the year 2002, at the intermediate level.

   This year (2002), I decided to apply for a place in an extension course in UFCG. Vacancy rates were highly competitive. I had to go before 5 am in order to get to enroll. I made a written and oral test to get in. Only vacancies existed for what was called the level 2. To got a vacancy was easy because I had just come out of Cultura Inglesa and know what was going to be on the test. I studded until level 6. A curious moment of the course was when I had the opportunity to interact with a student from Japan. Myself and another colleague talked about various subjects with him. I admit that it was not easy because the Japanese did'n speak English very well. But when he did not understand something, we tried to use gestures and mime. It was very funny and entertaining at the same time.

   Due to work I had to drop the course and then never went into another course. I've always had the habit of reading in English. I read a lot during the whole time before entering the university. I realized that my conversation was compromised because I never had anyone who could share experiences of English with me.

   In 2012 I entered UEPB to start the course letras Inglês. It's funny how the lack of information makes us have a different idea of the course before entering. Having spent much time outside of the classroom, I had difficulty with the disciplines, especially those that were not focused on learning English. I took the course by leaps and bounds - it had to reconcile the work as security guard and classes - until the third period. As I work one night and another I'm off, I began getting tired of going to university without sleep. I locked the course in the 3rd period in 2013 and now I'm back to try to continue and perhaps finish. That's it.