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Brazilian Kids Learning English By Video Chatting With Elderly Americans
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Tim Nudd writes that it's the perfect match: Young Brazilians want to learn English. Elderly Americans living in retirement homes just want someone to talk to. Why not connect them? The advertising company FCB Brazil did just that with its 'Speaking Exchange' project for CNA language schools where young Brazilians and older Americans connect via Web chats, and they not only begin to share a language—they develop relationships that enrich both sides culturally and emotionally. 'The goal of the Speaking Exchange project is to transform lives,' says Luciana Fortuna. 'Our students have the opportunity to practice English with people who are willing to listen. During the chat sessions, the students discuss ideas and information from their lives in Brazil with the American senior citizens, many of whom have never had contact with anyone from Brazil before.' The pilot project was implemented at a CNA school in Liberdade, Brazil, and the Windsor Park Retirement Community in Chicago. The conversations are recorded and uploaded as private YouTube videos for the teachers to evaluate the students' development. 'The idea is simple and it's a win-win proposition for both the students and the American senior citizens. It's exciting to see their reactions and contentment. It truly benefits both sides,' says Joanna Monteiro."
The reddit reposting service.
This scheme is a great success that is transforming the Brazilian culture. The first videos are already up on .
Never mind English, there are lots of paths to learning it in most countries. Not so the other way. How about a scheme for those of us who want to learn some other, relatively minor language, where it is difficult to even find basic texts outside its native country?
This scheme is a great success that is transforming the Brazilian culture. The first videos are already up on youtube.
isn't involved, right?
Yeah, let's teach the children that it's a good idea to videochat with older strangers on the internet, what could possibly go wrong?
Sorry, i don't want to be pedantic on this but really upsets me when people say "Americans", it's wrong in so many ways that worries me a lot for the kind of education that US kids have. For example, it would be awful if you refer to a french and a portuguese in this way: "Portuguese kids and Elderly Europeans". As far as i know, Brazil is still an American country.
Finally.... a real use for the internet.
Everywhere I go I see manicure shops and similar offering to teach Brazilian. I don't see there being a problem in this case.
'estadounidense' doesn't exist in English.
They are being used to further facilitate the downfall of the USA and its cultures and history.
By helping to spread the language and culture prevalent in the US?
Intresting theory.
bickerdyke
Just wait for some Brazilian kid trolling elderly to early graves.
Wonderful!
This service has even been certified : http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-x__K...
Let the empire fall. We will fill it with Brazilian scavengers and let them scam the elderly out of their hard earned diaper money. Omitte mirari beatæ fumum et opes strepitumque Romæ.
Rolf Harris, Stuart Hall, and those Muslim gangs
Vocês crianças saia do meu gramado!
(You kids get off my lawn!)
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
So your choice is....
You go to the seniors who reek of piss and vomit and spend the time with them.
Here we have a win-win. The oldies of your decadent country are helping disadvantaged kids learn about English and your US Culture, improving them markedly. And as the payoff to the other side, your piss-smelling grandparents are able to have a little human interaction, a little break from the fact that you are too fuvking lazy to visit them.
If ANYTHING is facilitating the downfall of your country, it's you and your pathetic ilk.
We've created an application (allinsongs) to learn english for brazilian people and vice versa. It's available for android and iphone.
www.allinsongs.com
Not all of us care to read Reddit.
The ones who sure surely are mentally strong enough to handle a repost every now and again?
Besides, don't you have the private pleasure of reading it first...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You do have the point that such programs should be targeted to US youth, to help their English language learning in a government funded program. The insurance companies managing retirement funds might protest to any program helping the retirees living longer though. That said, I write to slashdot to keep up and "improve" my English language skills and cultural knowledge, often pulling my facts from non-conscious memory, that is ass. I'm sure many of you feel exploited now.
Sorry, i don't want to be pedantic on this but really upsets me when people say "Americans", it's wrong in so many ways that worries me a lot for the kind of education that US kids have.
No problem, I'll do it for you, sans-apology.
First up "i" should be uppercase, even my spiel chucker knows that.
Second, depending on where and when you were born/educated there are between 5 and 7 continents. There's also a reductionist 4 name convention for academics that's based on contiguous land masses (ie: each continent is an island).
The meta-pedant is as follows:
1. There is no such continent called "America" in English speaking nations.
2. Slashdot is published in English.
3. "America" is globally recognised as an abbreviation of "The United States of America" by English and non-English mass media. If the author/speaker is taking (in English) about the definition of "America" (in Spanish), then the context should make that clear to the reader in order to be understood.
Therefore: When posting on Slashdot, Brazil is most definitely a South American nation and "America" is a North American nation.
"For example, it would be awful if you refer to a french and a portuguese in this way: Portuguese kids and Elderly Europeans"
You think so? - What's the problem? ALL Portuguese are European, NOT all Europeans are Portuguese, right?
I highly recommend using logic and reliable data to alleviate your emotional stress about the issue, It works for me, believe it or not, I do not suffer any mental trauma reconciling the facts that, 1. Victoria is in Canada. 2. I'm a Victorian living in Australia who has never set foot in Canada.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
wtf? what's in it for them?
...can barely speak and write decent Portuguese, so why would they want to learn English or any other foreign language for that matter?
I have seen far too much senior exploitation
My son participated in something similar in the early 90's. He was in the last year of primary school (Australia), after introducing the kids to a group of senior via a "party" in a nearby retirement home they paired off kids with seniors followed by maybe a dozen weekly visits where the kids and seniors just sat around and talked. The class was the weekly visit itself there were no set topic of discussion and no notebooks, the home work was to describe each weeks visits in writing. My son was paired up with a Hiroshima survivor who had fought for the Japanese army in Burma, not an everyday lesson but certainly a valuable one.
Having said that, I fully acknowledge that the majority of old people living in these places are either not lucid, require hospitalization, or are not lucky/rich enough to land in descent seniors accommodation: I drove a taxi for 3yrs during the 80's, I've probably seen the inside of more old people's homes than you would care to imagine. A "computer pen pal" scheme such as this one would be a welcome improvement to the depressing circumstances I witnessed in at least 3/4 of those homes. I can still picture the (very)old man with a vomit stained dressing gown tied to a wheel chair in a "geriatric centre" that had been built in the windowless basement of a large hospital, they hadn't even bothered to paint the concrete walls. It's one of the most pitiful real life scenes I've witnessed in 55yrs. But old people wallowing in "piss and vomit" is much worse than just "exploiting" someone vulnerable for financial gain, it's two of the worst of human traits combined - cruelty and neglect.
What these disgracefully neglected people need is basic dignity and respect. Assuming the status-quo in old folks homes doesn't inexplicable change tomorrow, a "bright-eyed and bushy tailed" teenager that reacts to them as a student reacts to a respected teacher is precisely the psychological boost they need. Life experience is all they have left to offer society and they find dignity in the fact that a "young person" (under 70) accepts their offer. Assuming there's no "profit sharing" arrangements between the entity running the old folks home and the advertising company providing the ad-supported social network, I really can't see why you would have a problem with it.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Can't be bothered conversing with the old folks? Fed up with their tales of the old days and embarrassing folksy casual racism?
Problem solved! Get a developing nation child to talk with them instead, so you can get on with your busy life. All the advantages of cheap labor without the annoyance of immigration!
Is it because they used youtube? Because internet based language exchange programs have been going on - at least in southeast Asia - for quite a while now.
Funny thing being that some fraternity boys try to pick up girls smelling the same way.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Language exchange is one of the most obvious uses of videoconference over the Internet; it's been done ever since broadband (basically anything faster than dial-up) Internet access was widely available, with plenty of sites devoted to that purpose.
Is it news because it's about elderly Americans and young Brazilians? This is more like an unabashed slashvertisement.
Why can't I stop figuring Grampa Simpson?
How can anyone learn English by chatting with Americans?
I hear...Donald Sterling will soon have a lot of time on his hands. Maybe he can talk to some nice kids in Brazil.
Have you ever been charged with training your replacement? Knowing you're getting the sack? That's exactly how this feels to me. This is more than "they took our jobs." We see the washing away of western heritage and culture all over and people are only now waking up to it. Read some news from around the world and look into the struggles in European nations with their immigrant problems as well as here in the US. And if it were an honest competition, that would be fine. But this is something being shoved down the throats of the public.
It has been said long ago by people wiser than me that you cannot maintain a first world nation by importing the third world. And ideally, it would be better to encourage the third world to rise up. However, attempts to doing that invariably seem to fail as long as leadership remains native.
The people of the US and Brazil both love sports. But the similarities end when you note that Brazilians take their fandom a bit too far. The deadly violence should need no linking. Liberia has been built and rebuilt by western people multiple times and each time it collapses into what the people make of it. Zimbabwe? Know about its history? South Africa? Recently one of the white anti-Apartheid leaders was murdered because he was white. There's just no getting around certain realities -- realities such as the notion of "a bad neighborhood."
By saying "bad neighborhood" or "bad area" people are placing the blame for things "on the environment" as if the solution is to move people out of the environment to make their lives better somehow. Really? What makes a neighborhood bad? Trees? The ground? Buildings? Streets? None of those things are responsible for people's behavior. It is the people themselves. That is what makes bad situations bad and relocating them will not improve things. And neither will helping them learn a second language as long as their culture and thinking are not a part of the program.
But we are training our replacements. The 0.1% has decided they need more and everyone else needs less. Look where things are going. Everything we do in the US is destroying family and the family unit. There are people out there saying our children are not our children, that they belong to the state and are allowed to remain with us at their pleasure. This is no exaggeration. That we, as a nation, have disposed of our seniors into rotten, stinky 'retirement homes' speaks volumes of what has gone wrong. And now someone has decided to profit from it further? It is more than merely appalling. It's disgusting. And it's not how things are supposed to be. How are they supposed to be?
We have families. We have children and we love and teach them and they, in turn, love us. We get older and if we loved and taught them right, they will take care of us in our old age and so the cycle continues. But that's not what has been happening has it? The notion of the family has been all but destroyed. Birth rates in the first world all over are unsustainably low due to new societal norms which require everyone be career-minded caring nothing about family. Lately in the news there are even stories of women who are literally buying positive pregnancy tests in order to try to trap men. That's how far we've gone and that's just a mild example.
There is just so much wrong with the program I have gotten very worked up about it. It would be ideal if we could share language and culture to the betterment of all the world. But that's not what's driving all of that. They are training call center workers and other cheap labor. Quite literally, it's a program of training our replacements using our society's discarded seniors, taking advantage of their empty, lonely lives.
This is no troll. This is outrage over how bad things have gotten. I was born in the 60s. I know a better time. I grew up with a grandmother who taught my mother and me about values of the family and of good living. My post-depression-era grandmother had much to teach u
I tried reading that, I really did.
I failed.
Yeah, everybody who learns English goes to USA and takes your jobs away. That is why only 7 people in Europe,4 in Africa and 2 in Asia are speaking English - everybody else is gone to USA. ... i feel so lonely :(
Sounds good in theory, but I think some people are under the misconception that the language commonly spoken in the USA is identical to English. In some instances, the two languages are not even mutually intelligible.
I think I remember a Ted talk where a PC connected to the internet was just "appeared" in a hole in the wall in a small village and with no instruction the locals could use it to browse the web and skype (or similar) to british retiree volunteers. They quickly picked up a range of skills entirely self guided including a knowledge of english. I think it might have been this one
Nullius in verba
This is no troll...
No, it's an enormous collection of stupidity, ignorance and racism masquerading as 'rose colored glasses' nostalgia.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Had a friend who went through the training to be certified as an LPN in the '80s, wanting to improve the lives of the elderly. She worked in several of those places, never lasted more than a couple of months because conditions in all of them were so bad that she couldn't handle it. Eventually she got of of that line of work entirely and had taken to riding her motorcycle like a lunatic, probably out of a desire to not live long enough to ever end up in a nursing home.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
You got modded flamebait because you posted on Slashdot.
Just give it a minute. The mod will likely change. There is no need to get all upset because the very first moderator who looked at your post was in a bad mood.
Slashdot is a pit of vipers. Don't let the poison get to you.
They are retirees, they have already been replaced.
When I was first learning Spanish, I had a very hard time understanding some older people. To me, they sounded like they had cotton in their mouths. I assume the elderly often sound like that to foreign-speakers trying to learn another language. I'm not trying to bash the elderly -- but they do have a unique way of sounding that language students may find challenging. Still, if you can make out their words, you can probably understand just about anyone.
You love your family, but hate everyone else. Disgusting.
Be specific. What is actually wrong. I could claim you're a moron for disagreeing with me too, but how is that discussion? You are clearly trite and thoughtless.
Not sure why I'm bothering, except that I'm waiting for servers to rebuild and don't have anything better to do.
We see the washing away of western heritage and culture
Seriously? Western culture is taking over the world. Compare photos of any indigenous people anywhere in the world from 30 years ago and those same villages/towns today. Blue jeans and rock and roll rule the world today.
Brazilians take their fandom a bit too far.
They don't hold a candle to British soccer hooligans.
Zimbabwe? Know about its history?
Do you? An entirely artificial European construct with borders deliberately drawn to promote internal discord, with a series of leaders armed and financed by external governments and/or corporations.
It is the people themselves.
Yep, those brown people are to blame. Doesn't matter that they can't get a job because they have to write 'Holly Park' as their address on the job application, and I'm sure the fact that their teachers were so underpaid and overworked that they're barely literate has nothing to do with it either. Never mind that the police deliberately push the drug dealers out of the "better" neighborhoods and leave them alone there (where the residents of the "better" neighborhoods can easily find them to buy dope). Nope, it's all because they're not descended from white Europeans.
our children are not our children, that they belong to the state . . . This is no exaggeration.
Really? I can't even figure out WTF you're babbling about there, but it's not an exaggeration at least.
I was born in the 60s. I know a better time.
I was born in 1961. I remember my dad's coworker losing an eye, another a hand, and the company just firing them because they couldn't do their job any more. I remember the Cuyahoga River on fire. I remember hearing people applaud lynchings in the south. I remember WWII vets at my dad's foundry chasing Japanese techs out of the plant and out of town, when all they wanted to do was install a new lathe. I remember announcements on the radio that "The Gypsies are expected to arrive tomorrow morning, they will be escorted out of the county by the sheriff patrol by late afternoon." I remember Mexican cherry pickers who had to go to town with the farm owner to make sure they wouldn't be arrested. Ah, the good old days!
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Horrors, hell, and damnation! Are they paying those senior citizens for their labor? I thought not! They have effectively outsourced Brazilian language teachers with unpaid labor from the US!!
John Herbert, of Spooner Street, Quahog
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Monroe Doctrine baby!
Seriously. it's accepted by the vast majority of the world. When you say "American", even the nut-jobs like yourself know the reference is not to a Brazilian or Canadian. Why the hell do you want to change that?
I mean, if we go with your logic, no one should call themselves American because there is no "America". There is "North America" and "South America".
It's colloquial and because it is so, it is proper. The issue is with you.
this ap is pussy licking not good and I hate it
u stink no one wants u