Everything started a long long time ago, when I was a little kid. My dad has always loved languages: he spoke Italian and Portuguese fluently, and could also make himself understood in Spanish and French. He knew a lot of languages but had no knowledge whatsoever of the most important and international language in the world: English. He couldn’t afford a private school, so he tried to study by himself and he bought one of these courses of English that come with books, exercises, cassettes and a device for “listen and repeat” activities. In the weekend he would take some time to study English in his room. He soon got very excited with the language and he started to teach me some of the words he was learning. It was really funny, because he used to draw pictures in order to make me understand the meaning of the words (he was quite good at drawing indeed!), and I related English to drawings. At this point I started to get excited with the language and I also tried to teach it to the rest of the family: I used to tell them the basic words I learnt, e.g. hand, man, woman, etc.
As you can see, his excitement didn’t last long: my father got busier and busier and he started neglecting his studies, and so did I. After all, my only contact with English was thanks to him, and when he stopped, I stopped too. Of course, I still listened to English songs, but when I was a kid I never showed any interest in understanding their meaning.
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