I interviewed Mayra, and she told me that the hardest skill to develop was the speaking skill. It was very difficult for her because she did not feel confident to speak. Because of this she felt in some way threatened by the environment of the classroom. She was always worried about making mistakes; I guess that most of us had the same feeling at the beginning of the major. For Mayra it was like a big wall that inhibits her to develop her speaking skill because she felt that her classmates made fun of her. She didn’t take advantage of the activities provided to develop the speaking skill. As she told me sometimes we know that it is necessary to practice our English, but we hardly practiced because we don’t feel so confident to do it.

The most common things that we do in order to improve the speaking skill is reading articles in English. This is one of the first things that she did in order to improve the speaking skill. By reading she had the opportunity to learn new words.  She also listened to music in English, what she did was to download the lyrics of the songs, so she could read and understand the meaning of the song. She also watched movies with subtitles in order to learn more words.

Mayra told me that even the activities made by the teacher in order to improve the oral skill didn’t like her, she knew that were very helpful to learn more. These activities were role plays, short presentations, debates, and pair work conversations. She considers these activities very helpful because they involve the students in the use of the language.

She considers that she still having problems because of the way she is. She accepts that she always give up before trying, but  I am really happy for her because the good thing is that she accepts  her problem , she knows that she must be positive and try things before give up.  No one knows everything and everyone is able to learn more and more every day, so Mayra DON’T GIVE UP I´m sure you can reach your goals.