Her English journey started a long time ago; I have been studying English for eleven years.
I love studying English because it’s useful for life, for example, if you want to travel the world you
can easily talk to everyone and communicate if I need information. At this moment English is the
only language that she is studying, but in middle school she used to study as well.
To improve her pronunciation she listens to a lot of music, she watches movies and YouTube
videos in English, she also takes part in an English course once a week and when she was in her
first year at high school she also attended some speaking classes with a mother tongue assistant.
She individually learned English by watching movies or YouTube videos; at first she used to watch
everything with subtitles, but moving forward she managed to understand without them.
It happens sometimes that she doesn’t know how to say something in English, when she has to
face such a situation she tries to explain the concept she wants to express with synonyms or looks
up the words that she doesn't know in the online dictionary.
She thinks the most challenging skill while learning a new language is speaking because she
understands almost everything but it’s hard for her to improve her pronunciation and speak
correctly.
Sometimes it happens that she doesn't understand native speakers; she experienced it in middle
school when she used to have a mother tongue assistant in her English classes. Sometimes it can
be difficult to understand non-native speakers, because of the variety of accents. She suggest that
beginners should practise a lot, also their listening skills, because learning a language doesn’t only
involve studying grammar, but it especially requires the development of communicative skills, so
beginners should try to find a way to listen to a lot of music or movies in that language; in her
personal experience she can say that it helps.
Of course, she thinks that the experience abroad is important because you have to communicate
in English (or in whatever language you are studying) and this gradually increases your confidence
because of the practice.
Once she was in Austria she had a conversation with a guy who came to her assuming that she
was a local girl and he asked her for directions, but they were both tourists and she didn’t know
any place there so she kindly suggested buying a map or asking someone else.
Even if at first she was worried about her speaking abilities, she had the chance to talk in English
with a stranger that couldn’t speak my native language and after that she felt much more
confident.