aprendendo português brasileiro
Portuguese for foreigners
By Prof. Audrey Lyra
Oi, tudo bem?
My name is Audrey, muito prazer!
I am Brazilian from the state of São Paulo, which is the Southeast region of the country.
I've been working with Portuguese for foreigners since 2010, but I started to prepare myself to teach much earlier, in college.
Here in Brazil I studied Language with a degree in Portuguese. This course is very interesting and you must be very fond of languages, because during this period I studied the language as a whole, which means that in the end I left able to teach Portuguese and with the complete training to work as a teacher.
After my course at college, I also took a postgraduate degree in Teaching Methodology in Portuguese and Foreign Languages, which only made me delve even further into language teaching, in my case, the Portuguese language.
When did I start working with teaching Portuguese for foreigners?
I started working effectively with teaching Portuguese for foreigners when I lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
My experience in the capital lasted three years and I learned a lot during this period: I actively worked as a Portuguese teacher in several multinational companies such as Thomson Reuters and Getty Images, and also had my own private students.
To show this time, I chose this photo that clearly shows one of my moments with my students: taking a break from Portuguese class and having lunch at the famous "Argentinian beef empanadas".
After my time living in Argentina, I returned to Brazil and went to São Paulo capital.
If in Buenos Aires I had a very rich period professionally, in São Paulo my range of students opened up because, if before I worked only with Hispanic speakers, in São Paulo I started working with more than 25 different nationalities.
One of the best experiences I had and that I would like to highlight was my work as professor at the Consulate General of France in São Paulo (photo) in who taught courses for different levels of French speakers.
And so, throughout this period that's what I've been doing: working with students of different levels, nationalities and needs, which only contributes even more to my experience in teaching Portuguese to foreigners and improving as a teacher.
Currently
As you can see, all this time I worked in person most of the time.
At that time, I was the teacher who went most of the time to be in person with my students: I went to their work, their home, or even their preferred cafeteria, so that these students could take the your classes according to your time.
However, currently virtual education is a reality. Therefore, I also wanted to dedicate a space to talk about my students who are now learning Portuguese with me online.
The positive side, which made me very happy, is that I can be in contact with students from all over the world and at different times of the day, without limiting myself to a physical barrier, so at this moment I have been working a lot with this student profile: the student who takes Portuguese classes from a distant place.