Lesley Bartlett (2007) The comparative ethnography of educational projects: youth and adult literacy programmes in Brazil, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 37:2, 151-166, DOI: 10.1080/03057920601165421

Having lived and worked in Brazil this article interested me in how closely the findings mapped onto my own experience.  I had previously learned languages at school over long periods using traditional “autonomous” methods.  I started learning Portuguese in this way but rapidly found that I could not understand or communicate with only this base.  To enable communication in the real world required idioms and conversational speech in relevant contexts.  I realised I had to make an initial choice – to be accurate or to be fluent. Because I had little requirement for formal written output, I (implicitly) chose fluency, to be able to be understood and to influence people.

This created interesting reactions.  My well educated staff would frequently correct my grammar. After I had talked to staff as a group people would confide “we knew what you meant”! However, people in the local community could understand me reasonably well and taught me lots of idioms which certainly would not reach the textbooks!  This highlights the significant contrast between language as a badge of education and status and language as a means to communicate – very much Bartlett’s point.

Interestingly however, the traditional method is the one which has persisted better.  I still remember more French vocabulary and grammar than I do Portuguese – which may say more about the structured way in which my particular brain works than anything to do with the better way to teach and learn language.