My experience with English language

English is a very important language. Nowadays, it is recognized as a universal language. Opportunities to travel around the world, to know about other cultures or getting a scholarship to study abroad are some of the advantages of learning English. I could summarize my experience in four stages: during my high school, at the private school, at the university and during an exchange trip.

We have to study English during our school and high school, but unfortunately the education strategy in our country is not good enough to build a solid basis of knowledge in a foreign language like English. Along our eleven years studying, we just learn some basics about this language but we are not able to speak fluently or even slowly. Hence, during this phase I passed always the English course but I wouldn’t survive alone in New York.

An important fact when you really want to learn English in a more advanced level is that you might study also in a private language center. That was what I did, thanks to my parent’s support. I entered to the language center at University of Ibague when I was fifteen years old. I studied during one year and a half; hence I got a reasonable English level. I was lucky because I participated in classes with native English speakers during my studies, I learned a lot, but unfortunately I couldn’t finish all the levels, altough I improved my skills a lot, especially my speaking capabilities.

Later on, during my bachelor studies, I had to read most of the time in English. I am an electronic engineer and most of the manuals, books and important magazines of my field are written in English, then I was forced to practice learning more and more vocabulary each time. At this point, I started watching videos on internet about science and technology; I couldn’t understand anything but those were my first steps. At that particular moment of my life, I was able to read and to express myself, but I was having problems with my listening, and my writing was just acceptable.

A big change started during the fourth stage of my English experience. I started studying a master in Control engineering at University of Ibague, and then I really had to read in English. I also had the opportunity to share with exchange students, specially with a student from Libano (Arabia). He spoke in French and English and he didn’t know anything about Spanish. I took advantage of this situation and I practiced my English during his 3 months staying in Colombia. In this master I got a scholarship to travel to Belgium to do my thesis, I stayed there for thirteen months, so I practiced everything I had learnt, my reading, listening and writing improved on one hundred percent.
I have had the opportunity to live in a foreign country, I have learnt from my own mistakes and I made some good friends there. They helped me to correct my English’s faults. Nevertheless, my experience learning English has not finished yet; on the contrary, I could say that it has just begun. Nowadays, I am probably living a new stage of my experience learning English. I have started a preparation course for the TOEFL test. I am really excited about this course and this exam too, I’m doing my best to learn more and more, these classes are really useful. I have seen how despite my experiences living abroad I still make too many mistakes.

I could conclude based on my own experience, that taking a course is not the complete solution but just the first step. On these courses you receive some guide, some help to correct your mistakes, but you have to realize that learning any foreign language depends totally on you. If you are really interested on learning English, then you should use each minute to learn more and more, besides, there are many tools to help you. For instance, Internet is one of the most powerful tools if you use it correctly; but you must decide having the endurance to success learning this very useful and marvelous language called English.


Written by:
Jairo Andres Hernandez
Preparation Course for TOEFL test
12th of June, 2011