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Brazilian Kids Learning English By Video Chatting With Elderly Americans

Posted by samzenpus on from the back-in-my-day dept.

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."

1 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Yet more English learning by CRCulver · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

    There are thousands of languages in the world, many not committed to writing, so there are a lot of "minor" languages for which one would have trouble finding texts. But what is the likelihood of you being interested in languages so "minor"? For languages large enough for people in other countries to hear of them, there's a good change that you can find texts on the internet if you simply look harder.

    For example, I am a linguist working with minority languages of Russia, namely Mari, Chuvash, Tatar and Udmurt, and even when I started learning these languages a decade ago, there were already abundant internet resources: lots of bloggers, provincial newspapers, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has a Tatar service with long articles on their website. Text has always been easy to get, but the last five years have seen a rise in the availability of audio/video materials. State television is now regularly uploading broadcasts to YouTube, and independent media occasionally posts videos.

    Plus, linguists have been one of the scholarly communities most dedicated to supporting pirate ebook sites. If you know where to look, you can find scanned and uploaded readers for nearly any documented language.