With English being such a lingua franca, namely in academia and in the world of technology, more and more Brazilians are recognising the necessity of familiarising themselves with the language.
As a result, a large number of new English schools open in Brazil every year, and as they emerge, the need for qualified teachers and attractive methodologies – combined with affordable prices – become fundamental to a school’s success in the growing private education sector.
I currently teach English on a course aimed at students and staff of the faculty of UNIVATES, a private university in Lajeado, a small town in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Having taught for close to twelve years now has given me the opportunity to test several different methodologies, and a bank of practical knowledge of what is and isn’t effective when it comes to teaching English to Brazilians.
It goes without saying that there is no perfect method for teaching English, as it is dependent on the motivations and focus of each individual learner.
I chose to adopt the Audio-Lingual Method for my classes as I personally find it a really effective method for training students’ oral skills. First and foremost, I like to teach my lessons entirely in English, even though the course where I teach (which uses the Communicative Approach rather than the Audio-Lingual Method) gives no explicit instruction about not using the students’ native language during lessons.
So, when I step into a new class do I just launch into a lecture to show off how good my English is? Not at all!
A good teacher keeps in mind that their role is to teach and encourage students to speak English, and that to do so there are techniques – such as visual aids and gestures – that depend both on the teacher’s and the students’ engagement to work well. However, as a native Portuguese and proficient English speaker, I like to take every opportunity to stretch my Brazilian students’ vocabulary and grammar in English.
For example, there are many similar words in English and Portuguese that I purposefully use to explain words and phrases that sound completely different in English; such as answer, hard and call off. Call off is a synonym for cancel, which sounds very similar to cancelar, its equivalent in Portuguese. So, instead of providing the translation for call off in the following sentence “We should call off the meeting.” Instead, I explain to my students that call off and cancel are synonyms.
I do the same with the words answer and hard. Although answer and respond are not exact synonyms, respond sounds very similar to its equivalent responder in Portuguese, and hard is a synonym for difficult (difícil in Portuguese). Even if the words and phrases in question are not exact synonyms, I prefer to draw on their similarities rather than translate. As my students’ English improves, I start to introduce more elaborate explanations.
The benefits of this technique are increasing your students’ vocabulary and thus comprehension through regularly introducing new words. As well as equipping students with a richer language-bank so that they can come up with their own way of expressing their ideas in English without resorting to their native language.
