When I say I have been studying English for years it is true, but even if I started when I was eighteen I have not been studying in a continuous way.
I do not remember anymore how I came to study English. I had “learned” French at secondary school because it was, at that moment, the foreign language to be learned. English could only be studied by private lessons.
I had among my pen friends a Korean girl, Cha Hee Soog, that wrote me in English when I scarcely could say "good morning".When I received one of her letters I made always first a word by word translation with a dictionary in order to have a global idea of the contents then with very simple sentences I tried to answer her letter.
I think that finally if I decided to learn English was because of her.
I found an evening course that was the result, if I remember well, of a social program. In my town, La Bisbal, there weren’t so many opportunities to study as in Girona. Some teachers gave private lessons but most were account orientated or remedial ones.
My classmates were from miscellaneous horizons, workers as myself, students, teachers, a bank director and even a monk. We all had good time, our teacher, June, was very patient with all of us that were just discovering the Shakespeare language.When this program ended we had some notions of English but I can not say I was able to talk but thanks to this course I stayed in touch with June and continued with some of the students in private lessons once or twice a week. Then I can say I learned enough to be able to read, write and talk in basic level.
We learned a lot and we had fun too, from time to time, normally after examinations, we used to go all together to a restaurant and later to a pub.
I had to stop attending the courses because of the army. When I came back I stayed less than three months at home and then I moved permanently to Belgium. The first three years I needed to improve my knowledge of French and learn some basic Dutch.
Having lost most of my English level I started again in what it is called today the EPFC (Chambre de Commerce belge) also with evening lessons for two years.
These courses were very useful for the European civil servant competitions. I stopped learning again because the French was far more used in my daily tasks. More or less four years later, 1990, I started again with the English language for about two or three years and at this moment I got to know Evelyn, my present teacher.
Because of the work volume I had to stop. Few years ago I tried to start again (when I say to start I do not mean from the beginning but to take again somewhere near where I had stopped) but the course was really boring and the level quite low. I felt I was wasting my time and energy so I gave up.
The language tendency at the Council is changing since the beginning of this century, most of the documents, more and more the meetings and everything is done in English.
Last year I decided that I wanted to reach in English, at least the same level I have in French. So I have taken again and quite seriously the learning of the English language.
To my pleasant surprise the teacher in charge of the level was Evelyn once again.Since then I haven’t stopped learning : consolidating the elementary, improving the intermediate and preparing the advanced levels.
I have to say that my present classmates are also very motivated which gives a good impulse to the lessons rhythm.
