February 2021, Issue 1
PESQUISA
Aprender outra língua: meta de 24% dos brasileiros
Pesquisa feita pelo Google no final de 2020 mostra quais as prioridades da população brasileira para 2021. No topo, cuidar da saúde (35%), seguido por fazer exercícios (26%). Já aprender uma nova língua é a meta de 24% dos entrevistados. Você faz parte desse grupo?
PROFILE
Nidinha Xavier
PASSION FOR TRAVELING
Nidinha Xavier, 86, has always loved languages and traveling. She’s been to over 50 countries, but one, in particular, has won her heart. A city, in fact: New York. In 2019, she visited NYC after a 6-year hiatus. Read more about Nidinha’s life on this inaugural edition of Profile.
NOVOS ALUNOS
Promoção para novos alunos
O ano só começa depois do Carnaval, dizem. Com a pandemia, a rotina de todos mudou. Para quem vêm planejando (ou adiando) estudar Inglês em 2021, essa promoção é um incentivo. Você ganha 10% de desconto por 3 meses assim que começar suas aulas.
LEARNING
Follow and learn
ACCOUNTS ON INSTAGRAM
Love Instagram? Check out this selection of accounts to follow and keep learning English every day using your smartphone.
Thank you for reading. Stay tuned for next month’s edition. Have a suggestion for the newsletter? Send us a message.
February 2021, Issue 1
PROFILE
Nidinha Xavier
PASSION FOR TRAVELING
Nidinha, as she likes to be called, has always loved languages. When she was looking for an English teacher, our shared interests in arts, cultures, traveling, and languages became evident.
She was a college professor for decades at the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM), in the South of the country. Then retired, she wanted to brush up on her English since she had not traveled abroad for over six years at that time. Nidinha was fluent in Spanish and could communicate fairly well in French. She also had some knowledge of Italian. English, however, has always been her passion along with a city, New York. More often than not, our conversations would revolve around her trip memories to some 50 different countries. New York City was one of her favorite destinations, maybe the most one. She used to spend a month in the city that never sleeps every year. Due to medical conditions, she had to quit long-haul trips at the beginning of the 2010s.
DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE LANGUAGE?
I’ve lived in Spain in the 1960s, and my ex-husband was Colombian, so Spanish has a special place in my heart. English was the language that made it possible to travel the world and know different cultures and people. It’s hard to choose. I love reading novels in different languages, for example.
WHAT ABOUT A FAVORITE WRITER?
Well, I was a professor of History of Art, so I’ve always read a lot. Two of my favorite ones are Nikolai Gogol, a Ukrainian novelist who wrote in Russian, and Marcel Proust, the famous French author. I have an old story where I tell that Proust saved my ex and me when we were visiting Algeria. We were stopped by the police, and my ex couldn’t speak French so well. It seemed that the police officer wasn’t willing to cut us some slack. In the end, I remembered something from one of Proust’s book, something like “this is something we’ll see with Monsieur Proust.” The officer got impressed by my French, and I guess he feared Monsieur Proust was an Algerian high authority, so he let us go haha.
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO STUDY ENGLISH AGAIN?
I was 83 when I contacted you. I needed to keep my mind active, and I could feel some words were slipping my mind. So our classes helped me to converse more fluently again and also to correct occasional mistakes. Now I see that it was fundamental for the trip we took together about a year later. I hadn’t traveled abroad for over six years, so visiting New York once more was a dream. I also managed to meet two good, old friends who live there, and that was amazing.
TWO PLACES ONE MUST GO?
The Hermitage Museum, in Russia. It’s beautiful, you must go. I would include China, but I was there at a really special moment when China was opening up to the West. Nowadays I couldn’t tell if it’s a good idea. Maybe I’d go for the cliché: New York City is a place I knew by heart because I used to travel there every year and stay for a month. I enjoyed that urban environment and going for long walks all over the boroughs. I think that’s an interesting contrast: Hermitage Museum in Russia, NYC in the United States. ◘
LEARNING
Follow and learn
ACCOUNTS ON INSTAGRAM
This month the Learning section is about learning through social media. We curated a list of accounts to follow on Instagram so that you can study different topics: vocabulary, phrasal verbs, idioms, etc. To see the accounts on Instagram, just click on the images. Enjoy!
Follow to learn irregular verbs through videos from popular culture. There are cards with verb forms and meanings.
Follow to learn phrasal verbs through simple cards with a short definition and an example.
Follow to learn phrasal verbs through videos from popular culture. There are quizzes on the page to practice.
Follow to learn more about different areas of English and how to study. The account has a series about language in the news.
Follow to learn English in general based on videos and quotes from celebrities. The series of videos Learners’ Questions is really useful for students.
Follow to learn English in general with a word/phrase a day. A plus of the account is the inclusion of audio in each card and the phonetic representation of words.
Follow to learn vocabulary in English, a word a day. A plus of the account is the inclusion of audio, phonetic representations, and the classification of words in each post.
Follow to learn idiomatic expressions through simple cards with a short definition and an example.
Follow to learn English in general, including collocations, idioms, formal and informal language, pronunciation, and vocabulary. It has the plus of being a Cambridge University’s page.
Follow to learn English in general with a focus on grammar explanations, phrasal verbs, and informal language. The regular series What’s Another Way to Say is useful to learn synonyms.
Follow to learn vocabulary in English, especially words, phrases, and idioms. The account uses engaging images to illustrate the language, which comes from Cambridge Dictionary.
Follow to learn idiomatic expressions through videos from popular culture. There are also cards with more examples.
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