Entering university was not simple and easy as I thought. People of the community have very different ideas about what we study at Faculdade de Letras, so, since I had belonged to the community people until then, it took me a while to adapt. I started with the famous “integrated skills” and I can’t say I have good memories of any of them. It might appear I am a bit too critical, and I am sorry for that, but my experience started quite awfully. The problem wasn’t only the teachers…it was mainly me and my English background. Since I had studied mainly grammar and reading, when it came to listening and speaking it was a disaster. The fact that I was a very shy girl didn’t help. And the fact that on my “oral skills” depended almost 60% of my final grade was simply terrifying for me. No wonder I couldn’t get as good results as I wished for. 
My main problem was the role-plays. Why? Well, first, I was very shy and I had a lot of problems in speaking in public; second, at the end of each semester we had this “role-play” evaluation but we actually didn’t train and do role-plays throughout the semester. For me, after years of grammar instruction, “role plays” were something completely new and with which I couldn’t feel at ease. As you can imagine, my results on these tasks were never good and I started feeling highly discouraged by the course: what was I doing at FALE if I wasn’t able to speak?
Finally I finished “Oral Skills 3”, and I felt relieved: I started studying literature and linguistics, which were the things I really enjoyed! My demoralization towards English vanished away and I started feeling motivated again.
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