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I didn’t speak English, understood, and more.
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I knew some vocabulary words (academic words learned at school) but without context.
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I could speak some sentences with a lot of code switching and some code mixing, with a little fluency. I also could construct a paragraph and I could understand some short stories at school.
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I knew vocabulary words, could understand some academic language, but I didn’t practice in the school because I didn’t have the opportunity to practice the social and basic language at school. I also didn’t have friends and families that spoke to me in English, or English TV programs. I could speak a little bit much better but that was it. I was more a receptive speaker.
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When I was in high school, I understood more academic language, phonics, a little semantic and more aspects of the language but not as good as the social language. I knew some basic words but I couldn’t establish a conversation face to face with someone.
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I had a lot of problems with the books because almost all of my Science books were in English. However I finished the studies in Science. I also had some problems with the English Literature class and with the conversation laboratories.
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I was doing better with the social language because I had a girlfriend that came through the exchange program from Wisconsin. I practiced with her conversations in English and I started to have better fluency. I also went a couple of times to visit her parents and I was speaking better. They understood me a lot. I had less fear about the language.
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I was having some English classes, practice more, work in the library, read some interesting books in English, and sometimes I tried to speak with some people who use to speak in English.
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I think that I’m not a complete balanced bilingual. I can speak, understand more, read, and write in English but not with complete proficiency like a monolingual English speaker. However I know that I’m much better than before. I plan to write songs in English, and more. I’m still working in that.
