Ele

Some time ago, I finally had the opportunity to interview someone around my

age and ask them a bunch of questions for the project I was working on. 

The topic was quite simple but yet very articulated: learning a new language.

I was really happy and looking forward to do this job, because as a language

student myself, I was more than interested in knowing someone else’s

journey with languages and especially the learning process. 

I knew that my interviewee and I wouldn’t be able to physically meet, due to

Covid restrictions, so I had to arrange something different.

We did a very pleasing videochat after school, in which I got to know her a

little bit more and of course, in which I asked her the questions for my project.

Ele attends the Scientific Programme in my same school.

She told me she has been studying English for almost ten years now, and

she still remembers her very first English lesson of her life: She remembers

that in the third class of elementary school she started listening to a song

about colours. 

She enjoys studying it in fact she smiled saying that even if she's really into

scientific subjects, in particular Maths, she loves English and learning it. 

She thinks that “languages are very useful in order to know different cultures

and then being able to speak with foreign people”. 

Concerning the best methods to learn English in a better way, she believes

that probably the best one is travelling. 

Although sometimes travelling can be difficult, in Ele’s opinion  another good

method is could be speaking practising with the English teacher about

different topics, so that students can really widen their vocabulary. 

Furthermore, apart from school, she thinks that there are also “non-

scholastic” learning methods that were, and still are, very helpful to her for

example movies with or without subtitles and eventually songs.

She prefers to understand every single word of the movie she’s watching so

she usually sets the subtitles; she does the same thing when she wants to

fully understand the song she’s listening to.

But English is not the only language Ele studied in her life: when she was in

middle school she used to study also Spanish and once she got to high

school she started with Latin. 

She told me some very funny moments in which she was often used to swap

from a language to another by mistake and to confuse the vocabulary, in

particular during an exam or an oral test in class.

As someone significantly interested and curious in getting to know different

cultures and traditions, and especially as a travel lover myself, I asked Ele

what she thought about experiences abroad. 

She thinks that it’s definitely important to make experiences abroad so you

can learn expressions and words which probably you wouldn’t learn at

school. 

However confidence is extremely important in these cases, so it’s important

to try your best in order to let people understand what you’re saying. 

To end our interview, I asked Ele to tell me an episode in which she spoke

English with foreign people, and how she felt about this.

Then she told me that “In August 2019, she spent two weeks on her own in

New Yoork to improve her language. At first she was very shy and she I didn’t

use to speak that much, but then she made and did her best to make the

most of the experience. It was very difficult at the beginning,  but then she I

learned many expressions like ‘to be into something’. She attended a school

in the morning and there, in the  classes we they discussed about business,

sports and fashion.” 

When she came back she was really happy for her achievement., and also for

the new friends she had made.

In the end, I was more than happy of the results and the answers I got from

my interviewee, she seemed very confident, friendly and willing to share her

experience with me.