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The blog of "Risveglia il tuo inglese - Awaken Your English", by
Antonio Libertino
Hi, this is Antonio Libertino, near Tropea, Italy and today I'd
like to talk in English about how I managed to learn and speak
English. Well, watch this video with an intention. With the
intention of finding inspiration, for you to see how I learned
English and you can apply it to your learning experience.
I started learning English in year 2000 when I met a girl I fell
in love with and I couldn't communicate with at all. She
started to learn the Italian language and we couldn't
communicate, so I had to learn English. I had a strong
motivation to learn English.
You have to know that I hadn't ever, in my life, learned English
before, because I studied French at school. Then I had this
strong motivation, I had to speak English with that girl. So, I
took a cassette course... I don't know if you know if know what
cassettes are nowadays. The course was this..was "Io parlo
Inglese" which means "I speak English" and these were the
cassettes that were with this course. This course was very good,
because in 15 lessons it gave me the basics of English...Then in
a very short time I was able to communicate with that girl. That
love story was over, but life went on and from that experience I
learned that English was very important for me. Well, I haven't
learned, I didn't learn just that, I also learned a lot of other
things, but as far as English is concerned, I realised that
English could be helpful for me, for my job and for a passion
that I have, which is knowledge. A lot of things that you want
to know about...I want to know about actually are in English and
English is a language that opens many doors and what happened?
Since then I started to...teach actually Italian after a couple
of years. But meanwhile, what did I do? After I got my degree in
Law. I actually got a degree in Law, but I've never been a
lawyer in my life, because I found out that I had other passions
to follow, what happened? I decided to take the First
Certificate of English. The first certificate of English is a
certification from the Cambridge schools of English, that
states...certifies that you have reached the level B2 in
language speaking...in English actually and I managed to... pass
this exam in just one year. What did I do? I just got a book to
prepare myself for the First Certificate from a friend of mine,
and I read it, I listened to the audios that came with that. And
I also attended a school. It was a school, a group course,
organised by the University where I was studying at the moment,
at that moment, and I attended this school for 80 hours. That
was, that was it, just 80 hours with a mother tongue british
speaker and then after that I read as much as much as I could, I
read this magazine, which is Speak UP, which comes with
accompanying cassettes and cds, and I watched a lot of English
movies with subtitles and then I started speaking with people
coming here in Tropea, because I live in a turistic place which
is Tropea. And in the end I managed to get that First
Certificate. Then I worked in Tuscany, as a Human Resource
Assistant, actually, in a company like Manpower, Adecco, so a
company for temporary job (work) and after that experience I
realised that I wanted to improve my English, so I set another
goal, which was to get the Certificate of Advanced English and
in about another year I managed to get that and since then I
never studyied English anymore, because I just read it whenever
I feel like, I speak it whenever I feel like and I listen to
whatever I am interested to in English. So, if I'm interested in
latest developments in Neuroscience I just go and take a book in
English and I read it (and read it), and/or I get an audiobook
and I listen to it. If I want to watch a movie, sometimes I love
to watch it in English and this helps me mantain, keep my
English in shape, actually. Another thing that I noticed is that
when I don't practise, I am not exposed to English for a while,
I get a bit rusty, but what I realised over the years, is that
learning a language is a process, it's never a static thing, is
a thing that somedays, in some days you're better, in other days
you're a bit less good at speaking the language. It's just a
process and you've to take it, to enjoy the process and relax
while learning the language. Over the years I started teaching
Italian to foreigners...although I use a lot of Italian while
teaching, because I need to teach the Italian language, of
course, I ended up writing books and a couple of years ago, I
wrote this book, actually, which is Awaken your Italian, which
is a course in mental training techniques to help you improve
your Italian skills and after writing this, I realised that this
book could also be easily adapted into a book for Italians who
wanted to learn English through mental training techniques and
the result is this. I had my text, my original text revised by a
mother tongue speaker and a... an american speaker read (aloud) the text
for me, so that you can also get the mp3s, because I really
thing that listening to the language is a very important part of
the learning. So, I hope you've enjoyed this video and I hope
you found a little tiny inspiration for you to start and learn
English now, or to awaken your English. I am Antonio Libertino,
near Tropea, Italy and I wish you a great day! Bye!
Awaken your English, written by Antonio Libertino,
read by Chris Snelgrove and Antonio Libertino, music by Kevin Mcleod.
Visit www.awakenyourenglish.com to know more about it!