Graduation Speech Mrs Patricia Fleury

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Dear graduates: you and your family, teachers and friends are here to celebrate your successful acquisition of an important ability – the ability to use English as a means of communication. It took time, work and effort on your part and, many times, on that of your parents and teachers as well, but you have accomplished it and are to be congratulated. Communication is a gift – one given to us soon after birth and developed with age – that connects us to our world and to others. It has made it possible for us as human beings to accumulate knowledge of ourselves and our universe that helps us not only survive but flourish. Through communication, we share and build and share again so that we are able to move forward, not having to re-discover for ourselves what others have already done so. Learning our first language, in our case Portuguese, was essential. Choosing to learn our second – or, who knows, third or more –, now English, was very smart. With each new language, we acquire a new world. Knowing the code allows us access to new ways of looking at the world, introduces us to new people, new experiences, and gives us new chances to learn, grow, create and share. More practically, it is a tool we can use for survival, and not just when we travel to almost anywhere in the world. Take my example. I had the luck to learn English as a child when my family moved to the US because of my father’s work. A year-long opportunity became a 14-year experience and in many ways, I became more American than Brazilian. Certainly so in my schooling, and


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Graduation Speech Mrs Patricia Fleury by Casa Thomas Jefferson - Issuu