Gre

Gre has been studying English for eleven years and, even if she is attending a

Liceo Scientifico, she can’t hide how much she likes it. However, she knows it’s not

so simple for her to learn and to become fluent, because the most difficult part of

speaking a language, she says, it’s the base part. She has to study a lot of

grammar and keep practising in order not to forget the most important rules, but the

most difficult thing for her is vocabulary. Learning new words can be hard for her,

especially she reads. In fact, reading results to be the most challenging and slow

one to develop, but on the contrary, she seems to speak with more confidence than

people that master the language. She admits she makes many mistakes while

speaking, but she can understand and have a conversation.

About this, she will never forget that summer when she was on a holiday at her

favourite camping site, and one day at the beach volley court, where all teenagers

hanged out together, she met a Polish girl, alone in a corner of the court. They were

making the teams for a match and in Gre’s team, one player was missing. So Gre

went to the girl and asked her if she wanted to play with them. For all the week they

spent time together, they spoke English, considering that neither the girl had a good

level, but they understood each other almost all the time, and when did not they

laughed together.

She says, she would have never been able to have such conversations, if she had

kept studying English only at school. Even if she isn’t a real language-lover, she

likes practising in different ways, for example, she is a gamer and she told me that

some video games are much better in the original language. Maybe at the

beginning, she doesn’t know all the words, but then she easily learns by playing.

She admits that she prefers watching films and tv series in Italian, because she

wants to understand everything, but she tried to watch some films that she has

already seen in English like the Star Wars or the Harry Potter sagas. If her brother

didn’t watch films with her, she wouldn’t use subtitles, because it’s not useful for

her to read them.

At school, some teachers recommended some apps to improve her English, but

after a couple of days, she always got bored of them because she didn’t like how

they make you learn. However, she still has some quiz apps in English that she

sometimes uses and an app for song lyrics. In fact, she loves to listen to and sing

songs in English. Once she was at a sleepover with her friends and they decided to

do karaoke with their favourite songs, also in English. Her friends were surprised to

hear that she knew all the words. She has a good ear, but apart from this, she

learned many things in English from music, also in the social pages of her idols,

where all the comments are in English.

According to my friend Gre this is the best way to practise a language, is speaking

because it’s the most natural approach. Obviously, also at school, she has to find

some faster and more effective methods to learn. For example to remember the

most difficult words she is used to writing on a piece of paper many times, at least

to master their spelling.

These things, along with also exercises from the internet, and/or videos about rules

help a lot, but in Gre’s opinion, the most important part of learning a language like

English is enjoying it. She started studying English simply because it is a

compulsory subject, and she used to find it boring, but then she understood that it

could be part of her life and in that way, it would be easier much more pleasing and

easy.