Teaching Material and Methods

Experience and innovation is our educational motto.

Experience has taught us to pay attention to what is important to our students. Thus, our first objective is to develop each student’s practical communication abilities in the Portuguese language. First, we focus on talking and listening with understanding. Then we introduce reading and writing.

Our classes, which are limited to just eight students, require a high degree of participation from our learners. They have numerous opportunities to take an active part during the classes, speaking and practicing as much as possible, making the learning process the center of the lessons.

Language and culture learned inside and outside the classroom

Studying at BrazilLink means learning both Portuguese language and Brazilian culture. Classes have a socio-cultural thematic approach, bringing you into contact with Brazil, Salvador and the Brazilian people, for a better overall understanding of the culture.

Therefore, we offer our students a variety of learning activities that take place outside the classroom, like field trips to places of cultural interest, visiting markets or museums and other socio-cultural institutions. This makes it possible to meet local people, who can give you first-hand insights and valuable cross-cultural knowledge.

Teaching methods

Various teaching methods are used, including multimedia materials and communication systems. Our courses always include a wide range of social and cultural aspects so that, at every level, classes can provide the student the skills to handle everyday situations, to meet their needs and understand simple information. Students acquire the linguistic means of communication to move around easily in Brazil and discuss subjects from the very basic to the most advanced with a correct level of Portuguese.

We also consider each student’s background knowledge, and the placement test conducted on the first day of classes helps us apply the necessary tools while teaching our students.

Every class at every level includes grammar, reading, and writing activities as well as interactive role-playing activities for all group members. Speaking, listening, comprehension practice, and Brazilian music complement the more formal parts of the lesson.

Teaching material

In BrazilLink’s Portuguese courses there are three books made by its teachers. But when a student comes to our school his/her needs are analyzed, including his/her previous knowledge of the language and what he/she needs to learn.

For BrazilLink, the students’ needs are better fulfilled when taking in consideration their personal aspects, their wishes and expectations, and their preference for one or another learning method.

BrazilLink believes that the learning happens when the material offered to the student is suitable to his/her level of knowledge and to his/her needs. What the students already know must be used as a tool to improve what he/she is about to learn.

Nobody can learn something that is totally known neither something that is completely new. The ability to access the students’ previous knowledge is a necessary condition of a successful teaching material.

Our books

We added vast teaching material to our official books – Portuguese in Brazil I, II and III – such as: games, handouts, audio-visual material, songs, commercials, documentaries, newspapers and magazines – a rich repertoire of authentic texts. The teaching material is continuously enriched and updated so that the students can be in contact with the Brazilian reality and experiment real situations.

Our teaching method and our teachers give the student the opportunity to learn a considerable amount of the Portuguese language in a short period, through a dynamic, efficient and fun approach. Every book can be used by the student for, at least, four weeks.

The teachers at BrazilLink mix their lessons with various activities concerning phonetics, grammar, reading, oral communication, listening with gradual exercises of short duration, but always evolving along with successive lessons.