Skeggia

Skeggia is a young student who attends the third year of high school. She has been studying English since elementary school and now this is her favourite language, especially because she loves its pronunciation. In fact, she often watches films, tv series and videos on youtube in order to improve it everyday by listening to other people talking in English.

Even if she is good at English, she finds reading aloud one of the most challenging skills to develop, because she feels under pressure, especially when she has to read a text in front of her classmates. Another thing she finds difficult is remembering the phrasal verbs, because she needs a lot of practice to understand how to use them in the right way.

During her language learning journey, Skeggia has learnt that grammar is important, because it gives her the fundamental elements to learn a language. However, she believes that having a conversation with a person in another language is surely more useful, since she can practice what she has learnt from the grammar.

In addition, Skeggia thinks that making experiences abroad is a good way to improve her level of knowledge, because she can have the possibility to speak directly with a native speaker. She has travelled a lot during her life because she has some relatives who live in countries which are so far from Italy. In fact, she has cousins who live in Poland and even in Hong Kong! Could you imagine it?

Sometimes it is not easy to understand a native speaker, for example when she met her cousin’s babysitter for the first time. Her cousin lives in Hong Kong, but her babysitter is English, so it was a bit difficult for Skeggia to understand what she was saying, since she had a strong accent that was different from the one she used to listen to by watching films in original language.

Another interesting episode when she spoke English with a foreign person was when she went to visit her cousin in Poland with her family. She had a conversation with a tour guide in Poland who had Russian origins, and she found her accent a little bit funny and strange. However, she was the only one who could speak English and communicate with the tour guide, since she couldn’t speak Italian well. Skeggia felt proud when she understood what the tour guide was saying, and she found the explanation of the history of the city very interesting.

Learning something about the culture of a country is important to speak a language well because it could be useful to become familiar with the traditions of the people who speak a language. This is another reason why she thinks that going abroad is the best way to learn new languages.

Furthermore, Skeggia speaks two foreign languages apart from English: Spanish and French. In fact, she attends a high school which focuses on foreign languages. She likes all of them, but the language she likes the most is English, also because she can speak more fluently. A disadvantage of studying so many languages is that she often confuses grammar structures or words. When she doesn’t know how to say something she tries not to explain it in Italian, but she attempts to find synonyms in Spanish or French in order to find a different way to say it. In this case, studying many languages is useful for her.

In her school experience, Skeggia has learnt that it is necessary to find many ways to practice a language apart from school lessons and assignments. In fact, she often watches films or tv series in original language with subtitles only when the accent is particularly difficult to understand, or she listens to music trying to catch new words and understand what they mean. Sometimes she reads the lyrics when the meaning of the song is not very clear, but she prefers trying to understand it first. A website that she finds useful to learn English is Youtube, because she can watch short videos when she doesn’t have enough time to watch a film.

In conclusion, she would suggest to other people who want to learn a foreign language to follow some tips. Firstly, not to give up even if it seems difficult. Secondly, going abroad if they have the opportunity, since it is a great experience, and last but not least, to enjoy speaking with people in a foreign language!