My portfolio

Ana Beatriz Pessoa da Silva's

marvellous, astonishing, life-changing English portfolio

I hope you enjoy it

Note:

The uppercase of the letter "g", in this font, looks like this: GIt is not a "d", the "d" looks like this: D

English in my life

My passport

Index

Cover

Merit

My work

Extra

End

My passport

Interests:

Studied in . . .

Literature (writing and reading)WordbuilingAnimals Neurodivergence PhotographyDrawing and painting Music (listening, singing and playing) Children cartoons Chess Astronomy

EB1 de ArcenaEB123 do Bom Sucesso Secundária Gago Coutinho

Skills:

CreativeGood pattern recognition Attention to detail Good listmaker

Ana Beatriz Pessoa da SilvaBorn December 23rd, 2007

1. English in my life

The learning journey

Despite having English classes since first grade, I only actually managed to get a good grip of the language during the pandemic, once I started watching English content and following English-speaking content creators.To this day, I am more exposed to English, online, than to Portuguese, and it still helps me, not only with improving my vocabulary (especially the informal part and slang) but also with understanding the various accents of spoken English.

In this screenshot you can see Tommyinnit and Billzo, both British streamers and YouTubers, in the stream in which Tommy tied Billzo to a chair and shaved off all of his hair (he used to have a mullet).

I read a lot online, which has halped me over time as well.Anything I can read in English is useful, but some stories have very specific quotes that work as writing advice, such as the one on the left ("This Is Not An Act Of Spite", on AO3). Then, there are also more antique works, like "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu, on the right, that help me a lot with formal and archaic English.

Watching shows or movies in English, on television, never helped me much, because they always have subtitles and I typically struggle to concentrate in spoken and written words at the same time. But, once I became somewhat fluent, watching shows and movies online, either with no subtitles or subtitles in English, was rather helpful.The musical "Hamilton" is one of my favourite pieces of media ever and it helped me learn about the history of the United States both on itself and thanks to all the fans who look deeper into certain details and share what they know!

English with friends

All of my close friends are bilingual.We often switch languages when texting each other, but it still helps the ones who, like me, aren't native speakers, improve their English. By texting each other, not only do we improve our coloquial vocabulary but also the formal, with events like Gabriel's courtcase for not wearing pink to the Barbie movie, for which I, the prosecution attorney, had to learn about the various types of objections.

We sometimes speak in English in person, though our native speakers do that far more often than the rest of us, for obvious reasons.This helps me and all others improve the way we understand spoken English, which is something most people can't often practice unless they're living abroad or watching English content online.

These are Gabriel and Ash, they are siblings and both Canadian (and will hunt me down once I tell them I put them in here).

My friends and I also often sing in English at our meet-ups and - not to brag but - I must say we're quite the choir.Today, I'm presenting Your Majesty with a redention of your favourite song - Bohemian Rapsody - and Shallow Now. The former had to be interrupted a few times, hence the cuts in audio (also because of its lenght), and also counts with...a bit of profanity, so please excuse that (take points away from Joana, not me, I don't cuss). The latter was less interrupted and is mostly just me and Charles (I'm a contralto, so those Lady Gaga highs were a no-no for me. Charles killed it as Bradley Cooper, though).

Bohemian Shallow

Other fonts of inspiration

Online English-speaking communities and music are also very important to me when it comes to upgrading my writing, listening and understanding of English.I mostly listen to music in English and read a lot from certain fandoms and communities, despite rarely interacting myself.

2. Merit

Back in middle school, I got a few diplomas specifically for English alone and English in the category of Languages.In primary school, I also once became my English teacher's assistant. I believe that was in 2nd grade.

This year I got honorable mention (2nd place) on READ ON Portugal's foreign language creative writing contest! You can read my piece "I, citizen in democracy" on RBE's page.

3. My work

Back in 8th grade, me and a friend and classmate of mine were amongst the school's leaders for the project Walk the Global Walk.We attented a few (many, actually, and they were long) meetings with the leaders of other countries and our own and even made it into an ad that aired on CMTV!

I started off writing in English with a short story named "The Rain as it Kills" on AO3 and Wattpad in 2022, and haven't stopped ever since.I'm a maladaptive daydreamer and have found writing to be my best way of coping with both it and the struggles of life, as well as a form of escapism. I'm finally walking towards the original story that has been my biggest daydream since I was 11, now ready to write it down in English for I find it easier to express myself and reach more people. Maybe, one day, you'll hear of the Adonis Tetralogy somewhere that not on a Genius presentation.

I started a journey on Tumblr sometime last year.It is a rather cozy space with lots of great people; it makes me way less anxious than apps like Twitter, that are full of hate all the time. Over there, I get to share some thoughts and, hopefully, in the future, I'll be using it to communicate with any readers of my original stories. There's a lot of writers there and I have found some very useful posts with writing advice and information on what I research.

Tumblr has also been a great place to learn more about accessibility and representation in media.I've improved my descriptive skills by writing "alt texts" and image descriptions for screen reader users and "plain transcriptions" for low vision folk, as well as learnt tons of vocabulary with blogs about

disability. I care a lot about internet accesibility and am organizing a group blog to help writers write neurodivergent characters, with the input and opinions of other NDs.

In our Teams, I have responded to most of the hashtags. Here are some of my favourite texts:

(On a side note: Technoblade was an English Major; hence how I learnt so much with him)

I currently have 617 notes on my phone's notes app (had 413 by the end of 2nd term), mostly in English. Hundreads of documents on Word and dozens on Google Docs; a few on Google Keeps, Genially, Canva and my laptop's notes app; and a few more on paper.Most of them are notes for my stories, a few are random topics and To Do lists.

4. Extra

Just thought I could share so me nice pictures I took :)

This rose-ringed parakeet visits often with his family

Peonies sumbolize prosperity, good luck, love and honor

Seaguls are hard to photoprah (I swear, I spent hour trying)

for now

The End

I first started reading The Art of War because of how often it was referenced by my favourite content creator of all time: Technoblade. Some of my favourite quotes include: "Know thyself, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories"; "All warfare is based on deception"; And "Then, until death itself comes, no calamity need be feared". All of these are translated in different ways, by different translators, in different books, but I prefer these versions (they sound more posh).

Just to say I used this for something, here's a YouTube Shorts about self-defense: