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Language Acquisition

Being a NNEST in Brazil back in the 80s Part 1

The past is never where you think you left it.” —- Katherine Anne Porter Having lived a year in the US, I was convinced that I had become an American. I spoke American English, my clothes were mostly American, and I did not like black beans anymore. I could not help pronouncing the word Coke...Read More

Teaching with Translation: A Journey from L2 to L1 in the Classroom

Translation a skill that constitutes a real world demand, and yet, it is rather underrated in Brazil while it is broadly used in countries like Japan and China, for example.  Despite its disadvantages — such as giving students the false impression that there is always a one-to-one correspondence between L1 and L2, for example, it offers...Read More

The Big Picture of Language Learning

“Novices become acquainted with activities not only from their own and others’ attempts to define what transpires in an activity, but also from how those participating in the activity respond to them.” Elinor Ochs, in “Becoming a Speaker of A Culture.” (2002) I have just read Elinor Ochs’ article entitled ‘Becoming a Speaker of a Culture,’...Read More

Pragmatically speaking – why don’t we study and teach Pragmatics more?

A friend of mine, who is also an English teacher, was taking Pragmatics at uni and admitted she was struggling to see the point of all that theory. I wanted to reply in neon and all caps: “All the point in the world!” Ironically, I don’t think I did convince her. I say it was...Read More

It’s complex, not complicated.

What is complexity theory and how does it accommodate up to date beliefs about how languages are acquired, and new approaches to teaching like task based learning and dogme approaches? Until recently, theories about language acquisition have been dominated by the cognitivists, such as Krashen, Long and Chomsky. The basic premise was that input would...Read More

5 fenômenos que afetam sua fluência

Todo estudante de língua estrangeira sonha com o tempo em que estará falando “fluentemente” o idioma escolhido. Dentre os principais mitos citados no artigo 7 conceitos de fluência e o que você deveria saber a respeito dela, um dos mais frequentes é o de que ser fluente significa falar sem pausas. E não é pra...Read More

Ser fluente é falar como um nativo. Será?

No artigo 7 conceitos de fluência e o que você deveria saber a respeito dela, apresentei algumas definições de “fluência” comumente encontradas na internet e procurei mostrar como elas são ainda bastante vagas e controversas (mesmo entre os profissionais da área de idiomas), dando ensejo aos mais diversos usos e abusos do termo pelo mercado....Read More
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