Brazilian Feedback...

A compilation of the ideas and comments which came up in the essays
written by First Certificate level students at the Brazilian Private
Sector School - CEB



Dr.William Glover, a Scot traveling the world with a project to create
international understanding, to get people to know about countries and
the way folks live, to do away with prejudice and to make English into
the language of world relationships, came to the school to give a talk
about the importance of English.
He turned up rather casually dressed and the audience thought that he
was treating the occasion with some disregard as they had been told that
one should always dress well for a public occasion . Actually he told
me that he felt so at ease in São Paulo seeing that people wore no
uniform that he dressed, perhaps, too casually.

I interject here in my defense to point out that I am travelling the globe for 14 months with one back-pack and as I explained I am not Mickey Mouse, I cannot just open my pack and magic up suits...I did explain this to the students and indeed made the fact that I felt inappropriately dressed a feature of the lesson...explaining the significance of appropriate dress for business.

The students appreciated the possibility of a blog to communicate in
English with students in the world. Everyone can access his blog by going
to google - William Glover University of Glasgow - building blocks and
read his daily report.
Some of Will's comments, though, were not well received because of the
way he expressed himself. Probably some more explaining would have
cleared misunderstandings.
In a nutshell, you cannot tell an audience in a foreign country that
without English there won't be a future and that the Brits needn't bother
to learn another language as everyone else learns English, anyway.
After all, language learning is also learning about a new culture. What
Will actually meant was that English native speakers are too arrogant to
bother to learn another language. I would like to ad that in most
British schools they still teach French and Greek and are now beginning to
give importance to German and Spanish.
University students take a one-year leave to go abroad to work as
trainees and to learn some of the language and culture of the country they
are in. To end on a lighter note, Dr William Glover wrote in his blog
very enthusiastically about CEB, pointing out that school canteens in
England have a lot to learn from Brazilian cooking. He considered the meal
he was invited to at the school very healthy and highly tasty.
He also stressed the friendliness of the reception, that students had
been appointed to show him round, that coordinators told him about the
school philosophy and the attention students paid to his talk. He said
that for students who are at Cambridge PET level they could understand a
lot and communicate well. He was impressed.
I, as the Cultura Inglesa Manager, and the teachers were proud of their
students who said that they had understood about 90%, besides being
able to communicate. And this was the purpose of this meeting: To expose
students to a native speaker for them to realize that they know a lot of
English.
If Dr. William returned one day, I guess, the students would feel much
freer to chat with him about his experience during his trip around the
Americas.


Compiled by Christina Thornton - Cultura Inglesa manager

This information points to the importance of clarity in communication. There certainly must have been some misunderstanding, as I was attempting to make it clear that English is an important communication tool for business use. I never said that Brits don´t need to learn other languages and I am glad that it seems to have gotten through that I was pointing out the arrogance of Brits and Americans when it comes to learning other languages...i.e. If they don´t understand shout louder!


From: GF - Vila Mariana
Sent: Monday, August 07, 2006 3:03 PM
To: Lizika Goldchleger
Subject: Will

Lizika,

Will's talk was a huge success. There were about 60 people in the audience. Pity we can't have repeats!

Bj

Solange Rollo
Gerente Vila Mariana
solange@culturainglesasp.com.br
(11) 5549 1722