The first step to studing

To get deep look to my learningprocess, the best way is start from beginning.

I started my school when  I was a 6-year-old child with high expectations of myself, school and learning. I wanted to know as much as possible, but too soon I realised that I was not one of the "smart kids". Even if I loved books and I even enjoyed most of the lessons... in my class I was one of the last ones who learned to read, in exams I sat on my desk alone when everyone else where already done and my homeworks were always full of mistakes. My  teacher could not understand why student with that big motivation get that bad grades. Learning took me much longer time than from others so I started see myself as a non-talent-student. In my head our classroom was divided to smart and stupid kids. And I was the stupiest one of them all. Of corse this affected to my motivation and I started to get more and more behind.

In Finland we usually start to learn english at 3th grade but in my school our teacher gave us a opportunity to join to the english club at 2th grade. Whole my classroom went to the club once at week after school. Even I was there. Every kid in my classroom already knew all the possibilities that learning english can bring to them: music, travelling, movies, games... And we were all so exited. But very fastly I found myself thinking again that I am "a student who is not intelligente enough". Even if I went to the classes, I was scared of all these things I could not learn. My learning in that time was more surviving than really learning.

My first english teacher was an old lady, almoust ready for her retirement. She had very conservative idea about teaching, so we also tried to learn very conservative way: we read a textbook, we study grammar with a blackboard and we repeat sentences after her. To me it was not so effective. And sitting in the classroom where I could not even understand what teacher was saying was totally depressing. If we made mistakes in our homeworks teacher made as to stay after class and correct all the mistakes when other kids went to home. In that age it was too unfair to handle. I felt that it did not even matter if I tried my best. If I was not good enough, I get punished anyway.

When I tried to study alone, I did not had any methods or ideas how I should study the language. I look at the book and I did not understand text. I tried to read same words over and over again, and I still did not understand or remember them. If I checked the word that I did not knew, I forget it after couple seconds. Then I needed to start everything over again. I kept doing same thing until I was bored, tired and ready to give up. Anyway, in primaryschool I did not have so many opportunities to study at home. My parents have huge fights before their divorce so most of the days I just planned how to escape from the battlefield. In these rare moments when my mom tried to help me with my english, she did not have enough patience for my mistakes and we ended up fighting.  

Right now my languagelearning might sound pretty dark but I thought that it was important to show all these problems I used to have. In next post I will tell how things changes in secondary school...