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Brazil’s English Language Challenge | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5261 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 1 of 18 21 January 2013 at 4:16pm | IP Logged | ||
One thing you soon discover when you visit Brazil is that once you are away from the tourist zone in Rio, there is very little English spoken. Most of the people arriving from overseas in the next two years for the World Cup and the Olympics won't be speakers of Portuguese. This came in on my twitter feed today from @riogringa who writes a blog called "Adventures of a Gringa".
Adventures of a Gringa- Brazil's English Language Challenge Lots of links embedded in the story to follow. Edited by iguanamon on 21 January 2013 at 4:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4667 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 2 of 18 21 January 2013 at 5:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know why Brazilians don't care about the English language.
If we compare Brazil and Argentina the situation is drastic: http://www.ef.com/epi/south-america/ ''Weak public education hampers English proficiency However, the poor quality of public schools across Latin America combined with unequal access to education provides a more convincing explanation for the region’s weakness in English. When Brazil administered tests to 2.3 million Grade 4 students (10 years old) in 2007, it found that 52% of students nationwide had low or very low levels of reading ability in Portuguese, the country’s main language. An enormous variation between regions was also found: 32% of children in the capital region, Brasilia, had low reading skills versus 74% in the lowest-scoring region. Across all regions, low levels of parental education and student ethnicity had strong impacts on reading skills. These results are in line with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s PISA study in 2009, which found that across Latin America 48% of 15-year-olds cannot perform rudimentary tasks in reading and comprehension necessary to participate in society, while among low-income students that figure rose to 62%. Clearly, if literacy skills are lacking, English will fall by the wayside. Understanding higher proficiency Argentina is the only country in Latin America with moderate English proficiency. Literacy rates in the country are higher than average for the region (97% compared to 89.9%) and average years of schooling (15.1 years) are also well above the regional average (13.1 years). Argentina has had high rates of primary and secondary school enrollment since the 1970’s, when most of its neighbors still educated less than half of children through 6th grade (12 years old). However, Argentina’s economic instability has hampered its development and prevented investment in education from rising over time. In addition, unusually high repeat levels in both primary and secondary school as well as high levels of dropouts in secondary school prevent Argentina from attaining the levels of English found in comparably wealthy countries in Eastern Europe.'' If you can read Portuguese...deu no jornal: http://www.estadao.com.br/noticias/geral,brasileiros-falam-i ngles-de-qualidade-muito-baixa-diz-pesquisa,950188,0.htm Edited by Medulin on 21 January 2013 at 5:47pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4714 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 3 of 18 21 January 2013 at 6:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's true, I grew up studying in a private school (the best ones in the country) and even nowadays, most of my friends from that time don't speak English.
I only do because my mom enrolled me in an English school by the age of 13, and I could develop my abilities far better than my friends. I also always loved languages, so that must be a plus. We do have English at school for 11 or 12 years usually, but as I said in other topics, it sucks. They mostly keep teaching us the verb "to be", verbs in the past and some basic vocabulary. I can't even imagine how is it in public school, that are much worse than the private ones. On the other hand, I go to a public university (the best ones in the country), and most of my friends here speak decent to fluent English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| FireViN Diglot Senior Member Brazil missaoitaliano.wordpRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 196 posts - 292 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC2 Studies: Italian | Message 4 of 18 21 January 2013 at 7:06pm | IP Logged | ||
Well, in public schools we "learn" English for 6~7 years. It's basically the verb "to be" on the first 4 years and a little more for the rest. I studied in a good (well, a lot better than most) public school and most of my friends can't speak English, even though we got to the phrasal verbs. Public universities are waaaay different. Most of the people I know speak at least decent English, and some are very proficient. It's a very small percentage of the population, though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Isabliss_27 Diglot Groupie Brazil Joined 4744 days ago 68 posts - 74 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: German, Russian, Latin, French | Message 5 of 18 21 January 2013 at 11:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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In matters of interest about the language, I can share the experience I had in my school (a good private one): In my last year, the class held about 65 students and judging by their behavior in classes I can say less than 10, if much, were actually interested in learning any English. There are several reasons for this, but as a whole, I don't see much encouragement regarding the importance of learning languages going on, nor the avaibility of resources to students willing to do so.
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| Acut Tetraglot Groupie Brazil Joined 4699 days ago 53 posts - 101 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish, French | Message 6 of 18 22 January 2013 at 1:38am | IP Logged | ||
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What I usually see is a lot of Brazilian students stuck at the Beginner/Intermediary level. If they study English, usually it is with a heavy influence of Grammar/Translation (particularly in schools), which is tragic - no fluency is achieved, vocabulary is minimal, pronunciation suffers a lot from L1 interference. I was lucky to take English classes besides my regular classes and what I see is that people usually stick to "well, this is good enough. Being merely understood is the goal".
I once read in a forum of Brazilian who study English as a second language that Brazilian students, however friendly they are, typically show a much higher resistance to accept the new language's "logic" and a much lower desire to learn (despite the ubiquitous importance of English) compared to their peers. It seemed to be an opinion widely held by those who taught English in more than one country on that forum. I remember that thread went bad quite quickly, with Brazilians defending themselves from that criticism. I never had an ESL class with students from other countries, so I exempt myself from comparisons, but in my English and Spanish classes I did see a lot of apathy toward perfection. So, it seems to be a combination of a) poor educational system *for a foreign language* (specifically based on grammar translation, or audio-linguistic methods which don't focus on the student's needs) b) Overall apathy toward learning another language or perfectioning it. However, I believe some of those problems happen, mutatis mutandis, with other countries/languages. I remember, when I was an exchange student in the U.S., how my friends described their Spanish classes in school. Maybe, after all, it's not a Brazilian problem, but a generalized one, of which English learning in Brazil is simply a facet. You may see some of the results here (again, anecdotal, limited evidence, but I don't know any studies on this topic). It seems to me, though, that the newer, middle class generations are far better. I am a sophomore in a good college - a public one, like Fabriciocarraro - and most of my friends know English fairly well (at least, on it's written form. Pronunciation is a trouble). Many are even working on their second foreign language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4667 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 7 of 18 22 January 2013 at 4:37am | IP Logged | ||
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Maybe the educational system should ''embrace'' some material pupils might love, like pop music, or sitcoms (with the original sound)...
If students have virtually no contact with English, they will not be particularly interested in learning it (like in my case: I learned German for 8 years, since it was obligatory, but I had no contact with German speaking people/countries/culture, so it was a difficult subject for me in elementary school and high school. I had good grades, but I didn't become fluent...because the focus was on grammar, translations, and not on speaking or understanding the language). Edited by Medulin on 22 January 2013 at 4:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sarah Reed Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4343 days ago 5 posts - 11 votes Speaks: French, EnglishB1 | Message 8 of 18 22 January 2013 at 3:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Brazil is a huge country that does not have a lot of contact with foreigners.
As someone said, there are foreign tourists in Rio and in main touristic spots, but this is not the main reality in the country. I think the lack of interest comes from the fact that most Brazilians never really had contact with foreigners, so they don't feel they will really use English in their daily life (which is true). In Europe and United States, people are more used to interact with foreigners, so it is natural they will be more interested to learn new languages. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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