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Blog criado por Bruno Coriolano de Almeida Costa, professor de Língua Inglesa desde 2002. Esse espaço surgiu em 2007 com o objetivo de unir alguns estudiosos e professores desse idioma. Abordamos, de forma rápida e simples, vários aspectos da Língua Inglesa e suas culturas. Agradeço a sua visita.

"Se tivesse perguntado ao cliente o que ele queria, ele teria dito: 'Um cavalo mais rápido!"

segunda-feira, 26 de agosto de 2013

O que significa “Go overboard” em português?







Mais uma postagem com expressões idiomáticas do inglês americano. Já pensei por várias vezes em parar o blog por um tempo indeterminado, mas, vez ou outra, me vem uma expressão nova ou uma postagem que já estava pronta (ou quase) e me sinto com vontade de publicar só mais uma vez.

A correria do dia a dia nos faz perder um pouco da paciência com algumas coisas e nos deixa sem tempo para outras. A tarefa de ter um blog que recebe mais ou menos 70 mil visitas por semana (média de mil por dia), nos faz acreditar que certo público merece sempre uma postagem legal. Tudo bem, pode ser que esse texto esteja passando a ideia de que eu estou “going overboard”.


Artists like to go overboard on their speeches and comments.

“Julian, don’t go overboard on your weeding”, said his father.

Some people go overboard pretty much easily.


To go overboard significa “exagerar”; “agir de forma excessiva”.
Vejam as traduções das frases acima.


Os artistas gostam de exagerar em seus discursos e comentários.

“Julian, não exagere em sua festa de casamento”, disse seu pai.

Algumas pessoas exageram muito facilmente.


Se gostou da postagem, compartilhe na rede.


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sexta-feira, 23 de agosto de 2013

Watching FRIENDS and learning something...



That’s my favorite TV series. FRIENDS is not only funny, but also a good way of learning English. I myself have learned a lot just by watching this sitcom. Here there’s a very good episode, in which, you may show your pupils in order to make them have fun and learn a thing or two.

I have a two-hour lesson in every group (every single day), so every other Friday we watch a twenty-minute (or something like that) video. FRIENDS is my favorite one just because the episodes are really good and quite easy to understand. As we focus too much on tasks and work pretty hard during the week, I think that a short video without any worksheet is a good way to provide students with a different, say, learning tool. It's worth watching comedies once in while without that pressure of having to complete something (task-based approach). Hey, learning also involves acquisition, right?

This one is about Joey trying to speak French. It is so funny that one student might say something like… “Hey, that’s like me trying to speak English” (man, I have heard that so many times! ha ha). That’s a kind of comment we (EFL teachers) don’t like listening to, but it might break the ice and make things e bit funnier. 






[Scene: Central Perk. Phoebe’s trying to teach Joey French, so she’s sitting in front of him with the script in her hands.]



Phoebe: All right, it seems pretty simple. Your first line is "My name is Claude", so, just repeat after me. "Je m’appelle Claude".
Joey: Je de coup Clow.
Phoebe: Well, just... let’s try it again.
Joey: Ok.
Phoebe: Je m’appelle Claude.
Joey: Je depli mblue.
Phoebe: Uh. It’s not... quite what I’m saying.
Joey: Really? It sounds exactly the same to me.
Phoebe: It does, really?
Joey: Yeah.
Phoebe: All right, let just try it again. Really listen.
Joey: Got it.
Phoebe: (slowly) Je m’appelle Claude.
Joey: Je te flouppe Fli.
Phoebe: Oh, mon Dieu!
Joey: Oh, de fuff!

[Scene: Joey’s apartment. Phoebe is trying to teach Joey French.]


Phoebe: Je m’appelle Claude.
Joey: Je do call blue!
Phoebe: NOOOO! Ok, maybe if we just break it down. Ok, let’s try at one syllable at a time. Ok? So repeat after me. "je".
Joey: je.
Phoebe: m’ap
Joey: mah
Phoebe: pelle
Joey: pel.
Phoebe: Great, ok faster! "je"
Joey: je.
Phoebe: m’ap
Joey: mah
Phoebe: pelle
Joey: pel.
Phoebe: Je m’appelle!
Joey: Me pooh pooh!
Phoebe: Ok, it’s too hard, I can’t teach you!
Joey: What are you doing?
Phoebe: I, I have to go before I put your head through a wall. (she leaves)
Joey: (he goes out calling her) Don’t move! Don’t go! I need you! My audition is tomorrow! Shah blue blah! Me lah peeh! Ombrah! (he gives up). Pooh.

 

[Scene: Joey’s apartment. He is sitting on the barcalounger holding a French study book and listening to a French learning tape.]

Tape: We will now count from one to five. Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq.

Joey: Huh, un, blu, bla, flu, flenk!

Tape: Good job.

Joey: Thank you.

(Phoebe enters)

Phoebe: Hey Joey.

Joey: Hey!

Phoebe: Listen, I feel really badly about yesterday and I thought about it a lot and, and I know, I was too impatient. SO lets try it again.

Joey: Oh, no, that’s okay, I don’t need your help. I worked on it myself and I gotta say, I am pretty good!

Phoebe: Really, can I hear some of it.

Joey: Sure, sure. Ok, (clears his throat and starts to read from his script. He starts talking in a fake French accent, making gestures with his hands) "Bleu de la bleu, de la blu bla bleu" (Phoebe looks astonished, annoyed and disgusted, Joey seems very proud though) See?

Phoebe: Well, you’re not, (she tries to smile and contain her anger, but loses it) You’re not... you’re not... again, you’re not SPEAKING FRENCH!

Joey: (offended) Oh well I think I am, yeah and I think I’m definitely gonna get the part.

Phoebe: How could you possibly think that?

Joey: For one thing, the guy on the tape said I was doing a good job!


 

[Scene: The theatre where Joey is auditioning. Phoebe enters when Joey’s on stage and she sits down. He hasn’t seen her.]



Director: Whenever you’re ready Joey.
Joey: Right. (clears his throat) Dja bu bu Claude. Uh, c’est la pu les la lu blah bloo.
Casting assistant: I’m sorry, what’s going on?
Joey: Dude, come on! French it u-up!
Director: Joey, do you speak French?
Joey: Toutes la smore! Bu blu-ay bloo blah ooh! Pfoof!
Director: You know what. I think this audition is over. (Joey looks disappointed, but understands.)
Phoebe: (in a French accent) Uh, excuse me. Uh, I am Reginé Philange. I was passing by when I heard this man speaking the regional dialect of my French town of Estée Lauder.
Director: You really think this man is speaking French?
Joey: Sa-sa-saw!
Phoebe: Écoutez, je vais vous dire la vérité. C’est mon petit frère. Il est un peu retardé. (Translation: Listen, I will tell you the truth. He’s my little bother. He’s a bit retarded.)
(The director looks at Joey and he nods.)
Phoebe: Alors, si vous pouviez jouer le jeu avec lui... (Translation: So, would you please just humor him?)
Director: (to Joey) Good job, little buddy. That was some really good French. But I think we’re gonna go with someone else for the part.
Joey: Ah. All right. But my French was good?
Director: It was great.
Joey: (to Phoebe) Oh-hoh! Ha-hah! See!
Phoebe: (to the director) Merci. Au revoir. (Translation: Thanks, goodbye.)
Joey: Yeah-hah. Toute-de-le-fruit.


terça-feira, 20 de agosto de 2013

domingo, 18 de agosto de 2013

O saber da academia para professores de línguas


Escrito por Almeida Filho.



Tudo que diz respeito ao ensino regular derivado do conhecimento formal e da pesquisa começou no Brasil com Maria Junqueira Schmidt, em 1935, quando o livro O Ensino Científico das Línguas Vivas foi publicado no Rio de Janeiro por essa brasileira pioneira do quadro profissional de professores de idiomas do antigo Colégio Pedro II. Nesse mesmo ano de excepcional colheita, outro livro de autoria surgiu da lavra de outro professor do mesmo Colégio criado e dedicado ao jovem Imperador Dom Pedro II. Trata-se do volume O Ensino de Línguas Vivas, de Antonio Carneiro Leão. Essas duas publicações inaugurais mereceram resenhas inéditas atuais nas edições de número 5 e 6 da singular Revista HELB especializada na perspectiva histórica do ensino de idiomas no Brasil.
Depois desses dois volumes autorais de 1935, a próxima publicação de um autor na área de Ensino de Línguas foi o livro do educador Valnir Chagas intitulado Didática Especial de Línguas Modernas, publicado em 1956 na cidade de São Paulo. Livro raro e feliz contribuição à instrução de idiomas nas escolas brasileiras, a obra do pedagogo Chagas distingue o Brasil no concerto de países sul-americanos. Foram precisos outros vinte anos para vermos surgir um novo livro de autoria na cena acadêmica de Ensino e Aprendizagem de Línguas – o texto de Francisco Gomes de Matos intitulado Linguística Aplicada ao Ensino de Inglês, publicado também em São Paulo no ano de 1976. Esse livro do Diretor do pioneiro Centro de Linguística Aplicada Yázigi, inaugurado em 1966, está alinhado com o que havia de mais atual à época no campo da então Linguística aplicada ao Ensino de Línguas – a influência dos princípios da ciência da linguagem na condução do ensino de línguas e, principalmente, a influência desses princípios flagrados em manuais de professores em livros didáticos.
Esse é o corpus de livros de autoria publicados no Brasil sobre o Ensino de Línguas que antecede a aparição de meu livro Dimensões Comunicativas no Ensino de Línguas em 1993. Com essa publicação, inaugura-se, no cenário acadêmico, a proposta de se trabalhar com abordagem e não mais com métodos e a abordagem explorada agora como alternativa será a comunicativa, tornada imensamente atraente desde então. Resta agora transformar a prática, a tradição e a cultura de ensinar vigentes no imenso território escolar hoje maltratado por uma crise no ensino de línguas que lhe nega o poder de aprender uso da língua-alvo mesmo após anos de “estudo” na grade do Ensino Básico. A base formal desse saber que habita os livros brasileiros teoricamente embasados que arrolamos neste artigo se expande muito quando trazemos a produção das revistas científicas da área, mas isso é outro episódio para outro momento. Conheça a produção nacional do século vinte plasmada em livros de autores e ajude a divulgar o legado que nos ampara na profissão.

Fonte:


O Professor José Carlos Paes de Almeida Filho é Doutor em Lingüística pela Georgetown University, GU, Estados Unidos. É Mestre em Educação em Língua Estrangeira pela Universidade de Manchester. Atualmente é Professor de Lingüística Aplicada/Teoria de Ensino de Línguas/Português Língua Estrangeira do Departamento de Línguas Estrangeiras e Tradução da Universidade de Brasília - LET/IL - UnB.



quarta-feira, 14 de agosto de 2013

Learning English from the news.



By Geoffrey Mohan
August 14, 20133:03 p.m.

Don't press the like button: Facebook is a bummer that makes us feel worse about our lives, according to new research.
Facebook users in a study led by the University of Michigan wound up feeling worse about themselves after two weeks, and their moment-to-moment mood darkened the more they browsed the social medium. It didn't seem to matter how big their network was, how supportive they thought their friends were, nor why they went to Facebook in the first place, according to the study published online Wednesday in PLOS One.
"We were able to show on a moment-to-moment basis throughout the day how people’s mood fluctuated depending on their Facebook usage,” said University of Michigan social psychologist Ethan Kross, lead author of the study.
"We measured lots and lots of other personality and behavioral dimensions, like, for example, frequency of Facebook use," Kross said. "But none of the factors that we assessed influenced the results. The more you used Facebook, the more your mood dropped."
The study adds to a body of work examining social media's effect on well-being, much of it offering mixed diagnoses. Looking at your own profile can be self-affirming, according to a recent study. And a survey of Facebook users suggested that it modestly increased life satisfaction, social trust, civic engagement, and political participation.
But other studies have suggested Facebook can evoke envy of others' activities and profile, leaving users with diminished self-images. Another study suggested that people with low self-esteem don't reap a benefit from tinkering with their online image, either.
None of those studies, however, followed people over time. The University of Michigan study involved 82 college-aged volunteers -- a core demographic among Facebook's nearly 700 million active daily users -- who answered questionnaires five times a day for 14 days, and rated their well-being at the beginning and end.
Worry did not predict changes in Facebook use, but loneliness did, according to the study. Nonetheless, when researchers controlled for loneliness, the relationship between Facebook use and mood and satisfaction was insignificant, Kross said.
“Loneliness predicted Facebook use, and loneliness also predicted how bad people felt," Kross said. "But the effect of Facebook on how people felt was independent of loneliness.”
“One of the things we don’t know is what aspect of Facebook use is contributing to these results,” Kross said. “Facebook and online social networks more generally represent a very new way in which human beings are interacting, and we’re really just beginning to scratch the surface as to how exactly these interactions work and how they influence us.”
Catalina Toma, a University of Wisconsin communication researcher who found that Facebook users could increase their self-esteem, said seemingly contradictory findings among studies reflect the complexity of the medium and point out the need to drill deeper into what people do while on Facebook.
"I think what's happening, honestly, is that Facebook is such a gigantic space where so many different activities take place," said Toma, who was not involved in the study. "So for us to be simply talking about Facebook use is an over-simplification. Facebook use is not just one thing; it is many, many different things."
Kross and fellow researchers conducted an exploratory analysis of the data that suggests a linear relationship between online communication and face-to-face interaction. As both increase, feelings of well-being decline.
“The negative effect of Facebook use on happiness became more pronounced the more you interacted with other people within that time frame," Kross said. “It’s very likely that there are going to be a multitude of mechanisms that explain this effect.”
Like other social media, Facebook affords people the opportunity to contemplate, edit and enhance their presentation in ways that are difficult if not impossible during impromptu social interactions in the flesh. You can take hours to come up with a clever response, whereas most people have long left the cocktail party when they think of the perfect riposte.
Toma suggested that users' emotions and sense of worth may be negatively influenced by the discord between tailored online images of others and their unedited view of themselves.
"Instead of doing a person-to-person profile, you're comparing a profile and a person," Toma said.
Studies have shown that users tend to put their best foot forward, both Toma and Kross noted.
Still, other studies indicate that the information in people's profiles closely matches their actual personality -- enough so that researchers could make predictions based only on the person's "like" preferences. You are what you like, in other words.
Whether any of this will make you feel better, however, may depend on whether you're reading this on Facebook.

From (HERE)


sábado, 10 de agosto de 2013

How to use 'imagine' by John Lennon for an EFL music lesson.






It has been a while since I last published an entry about songs for EFL lesson. Moreover, I has been a while since I last taught elementary students as well. Right now I feel very energetic and motivated about the lessons (we're at the begging of this semester) and the challenge I will have, say, to face. I have been teaching pre-intermediate, intermediate and advanced groups for the last few years.

I could not remember the feeling of being again participating in this stage, say, of English learning. Teaching this level might be a bit hard at the beginning. Students might need more time to think and it is quite normal to have some moments of complete silence in the classroom while they absorb, process, and practice new information in the language they are learning.  

Here I have this incredible John Lennon’s song called imagine. I am quite sure that everyone has heard about this song or even listened to it a thousand times.  

I have used this song so many times in my lessons, but always with different approach and purpose. I usually use it to present some prepositions, but there are many other possibilities.

Divide the group into two teams and give them these pictures. Play the song and ask them to only listen to it at the first time. After that, ‘brainstorm’. I mean, ask them to tell you what they were able to understand. Write everything they say on the board (even the mistakes and misunderstandings). Play the song again, but now you should ask them to put the following pictures (cards, if you like) in the correct order. Eventually, I may provide them with the lyrics and ask them 'to fill in the blanks.

I’m playing this song this week to my elementary students. Yes, that’s right. I’ll bring my guitar and ask them to sing along with me.


Hope you liked this entry. Leave a comment if you did. 
















Imagine
John Lennon

01. Listen to the song and complete with the words you hear.


Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
above us only sky

Imagine all the people
Living ______ today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't________ to do
____________ to kill or die for
And no religion too

Imagine all the people
Living life ______ peace
You may say,
I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the _________ one
I hope some day
You'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A ____________ of man

Imagine all the people
_______________ all the world

You may say,
I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day
You'll join us
And the world will be as one



PORTAL DA LÍNGUA INGLESA has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-partly internet websites referred to in this post, and does not guarantee that any context on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
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Is something important missing? Report an error or suggest an improvement. Please, I strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact me!
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