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Cynira Zini. Cynira is a Brazilian teacher of languages. She speaks 8 languages extremely well. Many native-speakers are puzzled by her "correctness". When she was a teenager she was an exchange student in the U.S.. While she was there, her brother was sent to Finland as an exchange student. She couldn't cope with that! Both of them already spoke English at that time and Cynira had to be the best. She bought a 3 dollar teach-yourself book and spent hours on it. At the end of the exchange program, she a had a sounder knowledge of Finnish than her brother Dany who was an above average student. Of course, her pronunciation and listening skills were lousy, but she came back to Brazil, taught English for a year and then went to Finland. After 3 months, she spoke Finnish better than 50% of the population in Finland!!!!!!!!! What a demonstration of INTRINSIC and INSTRUMENTAL MOTIVATION!!! No draw backs??? Well, a few: Sometimes when she's watching TV, she's so focused on language, that she CAN"T enjoy herself. Sometimes, she doesn't understand people because she is too worried about understanding. Native-speakers are puzzled by her language because it is usually too formal or without the natural language habits people are bound to have. |
