The year is 1990, I’m eleven years old. First english test at the new school, and Daniel goes like… OH WAIT. What? Four out of ten? Oh my! I’m a bad english student. My life is over. 😦

So my dad was having classes and I’ve stared having classes too. I had classes 8 am in the morning. Well, 8am classes were not a good thing… good thing is that they happened in the living room… I had classes wearing pajamas sometimes. 😀

I don’t know exactly what happened in those classes. I just know I had better grades and I was able to play around with english. Fast forward to 1993. There’s this TV channel called Bandeirantes, very famous during 1993 because you could see NBA games and during some games I was listening the broadcast in English.

My english is all related to basketball. Terms, pronunciation and everything started from that process. I was like a broadcaster while speaking… well, a lot of energy. 😀

The thing about learning English was purely about practicing. Although I could listen, write and read pretty well, I was not able to talk in an easy way. So in 2005 I’ve added a goal to do some lecture or presentation in English. That happened in 2007 when I was working for a company and had the opportunity, but it was not luck.

Back in 2005 I’ve decided to have conversation classes. I’m not into grammar and theory… I just wanted to practice and talk.

That helped me a lot. Watching movies, reading books, podcasts and videos were resources that did a great favor in my learning process.

But the most important thing was the ability to practice. If you can’t work for a company that enables you to speak and write more, you can create some sort of group to practice and keep the conversation going.

Try TED Talks, try different approaches. Make your way on learning a new language.

I need to make my way to Spanish… someday. 😀

— Daniel Wildt