Lesley Bartlett (2007) The comparative ethnography of educational\u00a0projects: youth and adult literacy programmes in Brazil, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and\u00a0International Education, 37:2, 151-166, DOI: 10.1080\/03057920601165421<\/p>\n
Having lived and worked in Brazil this article interested me in how closely the findings mapped onto my own experience. \u00a0I had previously learned languages at school over long periods using traditional “autonomous” methods. \u00a0I started learning Portuguese in this way but rapidly found that I could not understand or communicate with only this base. \u00a0To enable communication in the real world required idioms and conversational speech in relevant contexts. \u00a0I 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.<\/p>\n
This created interesting reactions. \u00a0My 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! \u00a0This 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.<\/p>\n
Interestingly however, the traditional method is the one which has persisted better. \u00a0I 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lesley Bartlett (2007) The comparative ethnography of educational\u00a0projects: youth and adult literacy programmes in Brazil, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and\u00a0International 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. \u00a0I had previously learned languages at school over long […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[9,11,12],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-et821","category-introduction","tag-development","tag-education","tag-local-issues"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jugu.org\/gblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jugu.org\/gblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jugu.org\/gblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jugu.org\/gblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jugu.org\/gblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jugu.org\/gblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149,"href":"https:\/\/jugu.org\/gblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions\/149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jugu.org\/gblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jugu.org\/gblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jugu.org\/gblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}