Communicative Method

A person who decides to start learning Portuguese always thinks how long it will take to learn so that he can start speaking, communicate in Portuguese. Month? Year? Everybody wants to achieve results as soon as possible!

The answer is to choose the Portuguese language course according to the Communicative Method. In this article, we want to tell you more about it.

The basic principle

From the first lesson, students begin to speak their first phrases in Portuguese, because the Communicative technique is aimed precisely at developing speaking skills. The first and foremost goal of language learning is to communicate fluently with a native Portuguese speaker.

But how is it possible – not to know anything and start speaking? The structure of any language is a specific set of parts of a sentence. The minimum set is subject and predicate. Therefore, getting vocabulary in the first and subsequent lessons, you can safely create simple sentences right away!

Lesson’s structure

The secret of the Communicative Method is that the teacher speaks in Portuguese, resorting to another language only when is necessary. 70% of the lesson time is spoken by the student, 30% is left for the teacher. Therefore, it is very important that the teacher is a native speaker.

Thus, the temptation to switch to your native language is very small, as if you were in Portugal among the locals. Learning Portuguese using a Communicative Method is not about memorizing standard phrases, but expressing your own thoughts, ideas and feelings.

Therefore, most of the time students talk about themselves and their interests during the lesson.

Vocabulary

This point follows from the previous point. Since the student tells only what is interesting for him in Portuguese, it becomes obvious which words he needs for it. This process becomes natural, that is, there is no need to remind vocabulary that will not be useful in the future.

By exchanging opinions and stories with the teacher and other students, the student broadens his horizons, enriches his vocabulary and absorbs only the necessary vocabulary in the natural environment, like a child. The key word is efficiency. But efficiency does not mean easiness, it means only necessary, practical.

Reading

One gets the impression that the Communicative technique is only talking, but it is not true. To kickstart a new topic, sometimes you need to read about it.

However, with a Communicative technique, you do not need to get hung up on the translation of each word. It is important to understand the general meaning. Therefore, you will not be involved in translations during the course. It is enough to choose the most useful words for yourself, because not all words in the text can be widely used in real life.

Thus, vocabulary notes will not be filled with hundreds of new words after each lesson that are difficult to remember and have nowhere to apply.

Spelling

It is quite difficult to orally formulate thoughts, especially in Portuguese, which is still a foreign language for you. Writing texts teaches you to express thoughts more concisely, not to use “parasitic” words and more accurately convey an idea. Therefore, with the Communicative

Method, time is also given to this section of training.

Most of the tasks of this type are given by the teacher at home, where you still will not be able to practice the Portuguese language orally, because there you do not have enough interlocutor. Reflection in the mirror won’t help you with this!

Listening

Listening helps to learn to comprehend the speaker’s speech by ear, so in the classroom, students listen to audio recordings on the topic of the lesson. Because if you listen to one teacher, you can get used to perceive only his speech.

The task of the Communicative Methodology is to teach to understand different people: children and old people, young people and adults, other foreigners and people with different temperaments and manner of speech. However, no audio recording can replace live communication with a teacher, because the key word here is interaction.

It is important to be able to ask a question, answer, argue and agree, as well as get reactions and comments in return.

Grammar

Grammar is important for speaking correctly and beautifully, but skewing towards perfecting rules and doing exercises throughout the lesson harms the rest of the skills.

With the Communicative Method, grammar is presented in the context of the lesson. That is, the student will immediately begin to practice the new grammar rule: he will see its application in the text and will start using it himself.

It is important not to overload the head with mechanical actions. Any grammar rules should be important and necessary for the student so that they are useful to him in communication.

Modeling

The topics of the lesson in the Communicative Method of learning the Portuguese language are selected in such a way as to simulate a situation from real life: shopping, meeting friends, preparing for a holiday, self-presentation, and the other. There is absolutely no point in

learning from the dialogues of others, trying to empathize with them and, as a result, passively observe.

It is important that the student himself be involved in a fictional situation that is likely to happen to him in the future. Another advantage: it is very fun and interesting!

Conclusion

The Communicative Method is not a magic drink, after which you wake up and speak in Portuguese. This is just the most effective language learning Method if your goal is to have no language barrier and communicate in Portuguese. It still takes some effort on your part, but it takes us to help you jump straight to the practice of Portuguese by teaching you by Communicative Method.