Language | Language Learning | Education | Culture
How English Became My Native Language
Overcoming Challenges and Embracing Opportunities in English Language Acquisition
Do you believe it’s possible to become a native speaker in a second language?
I say YES!
Let me explain.
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Learning English in Kindergarten
My English learning journey started in 2006 when my parents enrolled me in a kindergarten where I could take part in an English course.
Fun fact: my first ever word in English was “strawberry yogurt”.
It was pretty fun, I must say. We learned English through role-playing.
One of the most memorable experiences for me was what I would name “Mother Hen’s Search for Her Lost Egg”. (I can’t recall what it’s actually called, lol.)
This children’s play that we performed was basically about a mother chicken looking for her egg and asking different animals if they had seen her egg.
Spoiler alert: In the end, they found the egg (aka me).
A funny thing to me is that I was playing the role of the egg, and at the end, when the animals finally found me, they all put their fingers on me and said, “Look, Mother Chicken, this is your egg!”
I was so embarrassed because all the attention was on me – something I was always resistant to due to the social anxiety I had.
One of the things I still recall quite vividly was also the “Happy House” textbook that we had, and the stamp pens our teacher allowed us to use after we successfully participated in each lesson.
I loved every second of it, and the teacher was always very supportive of me – don’t worry, she was also supportive of everyone else; she probably just saw and felt my love for the English language.
Those were definitely great memories and a wonderful association with English.
A factor that probably played a huge part in my acquisition of the English language, was the fact that I used to watch cartoons in English, mostly without subtitles, for as long as I can remember.
Acquiring English in Primary School
My second encounter with the English language followed in the first grade of primary school.
For the first three years of primary school, I had English as an elective subject.
Luckily I had a bunch of prior knowledge from kindergarten, so everything went smoothly.
But then, in fourth grade, things became a little tricky.
We got a different teacher, a very strict one, and also we received grades – we were the last generation at that school not to have grades in third grade and began to be introduced to grades only in fourth grade.
This teacher wasn’t supportive of me at all, quite the opposite actually; she was always ready to criticize, and when I tell you, she did not hold back.
So, instead of having all A’s in English, I was struggling to get a B.
There were quite a few things about English that were unclear to me, especially the grammar rules, and I couldn’t memorize them for the life of me.
We always had a bunch of homework, which I rarely did – I didn’t know how to do it, and I had no one to help me.
I lived in an abusive household with a narcissistic mother, and every once in a while that the action of me forgetting to do my homework repeated too often, my mother would find out right away, and let me tell you, her “not being happy” about it is an understatement.
I didn’t tell my teacher about the abuse mostly because it was a huge taboo, plus she would think that I was making things up so I wouldn’t have to do my homework.
So I kept quiet and took responsibility for my actions without saying anything back, which I do not recommend.
So, at this point, I was petrified by both the teacher and my mother, and I had nobody to help me.
English Course at Mint International House
Then, in fifth grade, I started attending an English course at Mint International House.
At first, I really enjoyed it because the teacher was very nice, patient, and supportive, plus, we got candy at the end of each lesson.
Then after a few months, a different teacher came.
He was a native English speaker from Scotland.
An interesting memory that I have is that he didn’t know how to write the word “cinnamon,” whether it had a double n at the beginning, a double n at the end, or just two n’s on each end.
While I didn’t have an answer for him at the time, I for sure remember how to write ‘cinnamon’ to this day.
I don’t know whether it was a trick to get us to default to English or not but he didn’t know how to speak Slovene – I believe he really didn’t. So that was an interesting challenge.
I was very scared of attending this English course because everyone got their chance to speak at some point and I barely understood anything.
But now, when I look back, I see that it was of tremendous value because I wouldn’t be such a proficient English speaker as I am today otherwise.
Something that I am quite proud of is that I acquired an A2 English certificate at the end of the course, which is quite impressive for a 10-year-old in Slovenia.
At 10 years old, I also got my first phone (a pink Nokia Asha 311) – speaking of nostalgia!
I downloaded the Galaxy app thinking it was a game but I later discovered that there were real people there that you could talk to.
Most people were weird, there were a bunch of pedophiles, which I didn’t comprehend at that time but at least it helped me to learn English.
A huge game-changer for my English language acquisition was when I started watching TV and YouTube in English, eventually even without subtitles (without Slovene or English subtitles – that second one was quite a milestone for me!).
Songwriting as a form of language learning
What also helped me is that at that time, I also started writing songs in English, under the pseudonym Bella Diamond – it was for a long time the only way that I could truly express myself and the mental health struggles that came with enduring abuse from my narcissistic mother.
A nice milestone in my songwriting “career” was when I wrote a song for a young and famous Indian singer called Sharina Ahmad.
You can check out the song [here].
As a quick disclaimer, please note that this was a custom-made song that I wrote based on the singer’s request and does not reflect my political beliefs.
Well, let’s get back to my English learning journey…
Becoming Fluent in English
I am proud to say that I became fluent in English around the age of 12.
At that time, when I changed schools, my English skills were so ahead of my classmates that I sometimes got the chance to give lectures instead of our teacher, and at that time I finally managed to get those A’s in English.
Another funny thing that I can recall is that at the time when I was recovering from my Achilles tendon surgery and attending the University Rehabilitation Institute’s school, I was so passionate about English that I helped a lazy classmate solve all the tasks in his entire workbook and textbook.
Then, when I started attending Secondary school for Cosmetics, English was my favorite subject.
Then, when I changed schools and started attending Secondary school, where I got the chance to learn even more languages, I was over the moon!
You might’ve already read about that [here].
I am tremendously proud to say that I am a holder of the TEFL certificate for teaching English as a foreign language since December 2022.
Takeaway
I adore the fact that even since kindergarten, I never stopped learning English, and I now speak it at a near-native level, contemplating sitting the Cambridge C2 Proficiency exam sometime in the near future.
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