I'm from Brazil, so Portuguese is my native language. It's common here for middle-class young people to take English courses for several years. I took one for

I'm from Brazil, so Portuguese is my native language. It's common here for middle-class young people to take English courses for several years. I took one for six years, then one more year of a conversation course. That, along with watching movies and TV (and reading and listening to music, and...) took me far enough. Then, a couple of years back, I went to California to live there for a whole year and I must say that made a whole lot of difference.