| Nome:
Jane Godwin Coury (autoriza o uso do nome verdadeiro) I
am British and have been living and working as an English teacher
in Brazil for the last 10 years. I would like to share with you
how I learnt Portuguese as a foreign language.
I
first learnt Portuguese with my husband in England. He is Brazilian
and we met while he was doing his PhD there and I was studying for
a degree in French and European Studies. I have always been fascinated
by languages and when I heard Brazilian Portuguese I liked the sound
of it. That added to the fact that I had a Brazilian boyfriend motivated
me to learn Portuguese. As
part of my degree I went to France and I had the chance to study
Brazilian Portuguese for 2 months at Aix-en-Provence University.
The teacher used the Audiolingual method and it consisted of showing
the students slides on the wall of João catching a train. We then
had to repeat sentences mindlessly. I must admit I remember the
visual pictures, but I do not remember much about the language.
When
I arrived in Brazil, I started picking up the language with people
on a day-to-day basis. I also had some formal lessons for about
a year with a great teacher who used music in her lessons. Being
exposed to the language constantly and communicating with receptive
people made me learn a lot, however I feel I have some ´holes´ in
the language. I have come to a point of ´fossilization´ whereby
I rely on the language I have and don’t learn much new vocabulary.
I don’t go out of my way to learn new vocabulary, perhaps because
of a lack of time. I have also not had much practice in writing
and I feel very insecure about this skill.
I
teach English using the communicative and humanistic approach, but
it is not enough sometimes. I believe, as a language teacher, you
need to analyse each students´ needs to see where their ´holes´
are and attempt to fill them in.
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