Nome: Jane Godwin Coury (autoriza o uso do nome verdadeiro)
Idade: 35 anos
Escolaridade: Mestrado em LA (Professora de inglês em escola particular de idiomas)
Tempo de aprendizagem da LE: 10 anos (português)
Data da coleta: 26/05/2005

 

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.