Hello! My name is Alba Contreras. I was born in a rural area of the Dominican Republic. Where the possibility of interacting with the outside world was extraordinarily little, as I grew older, I realized how big the world was and the variety of cultures that exists.
Then I got to meet people who spoke other languages and the only way I could communicate with them was because they spoke my language, but it was intriguing that when they spoke to each other I could not understand and if these people did not speak my language.
I could not communicate with then. So, from this my interest in cultures and languages was born. But I lived in a very remote. At that at the moment I did not have the opportunity to learn.
Sometime later my mother moved to the city and I started high school where I was supposed to be taught English and French, but what a disappointment. I just learnt the TO BE and in French I barely learned to say BONJOUR Which is hello.
After finishing high school and seeing that I had not managed to learn, I decided to study to be a language teacher.
After four years of studying between English, French and other languages, when I finished the university, I realized that I couldn’t watch my favorite movie in the original version and to understand it without Spanish’s subtitles, so despite learning so much grammar and so many techniques to teach. In the end, I did not have a command of the languages.
I realized that the only way to learn a language is by taking the control of our learning and immersing ourselves in that language that we want to learn.