The Perspective of the Bilingual Program in Brazil
English is crucial in today’s world across economic, cultural, technological, and educational domains, offering benefits like job opportunities, access to information, and cultural understanding. With 1.88 billion speakers globally, English serves as the modern lingua franca, widely used in international communication and accessible in online content, including science, news, and education. In Brazil, growing recognition of English’s importance drives schools to enhance language education, emphasizing intercultural skills and preparing students to be global citizens.
Regular schools follow the curriculum established by MEC (Ministério da Educação) and they provide traditional education from early childhood to high school, with English classes being offered once or twice a week. It is not enough when it comes to preparing students to the use of an additional language.
A school with a Bilingual Program expands on this, offering more English classes a week, and integrating English into other subjects, helping students use it as a tool for global communication. However, merely adding hours isn’t enough; the approach to teaching English must shift from a language-structure focus to one that provides real, meaningful use of the language in students’ lives.
The Brazilian BNCC (Base Nacional Comum Curricular), the national framework to be followed by schools, supports this by positioning English as a tool for accessing the globalized world and fostering intercultural understanding. Moving beyond its traditional role as a foreign language, English is seen as an extra tool immersed in daily life and education. The focus shifts to teaching methods that actively engage students, helping them connect English learning to their roles in a global society.
Where to start this change?
Students need to be encouraged toward more integrated and coherent learning. What a student brings to class each year is largely related to their prior results. Those who find it easier tend to do better, while those who struggle tend to achieve less. To change this pattern, teachers must incorporate various strategies and approaches, allowing students to be challenged and supported at their own pace in building knowledge.
A strong, assertive step is to partner with a Bilingual Program for implementation support. This partnership guides school management on measures such as extending class hours and providing digital resources, if not already in place.
The teacher is essential for meaningful learning. They must be proficient in English to serve as a role model for students, easing them into meaningful language presence in class. This teacher needs access to training and encouragement, ensuring this new language-learning approach is applied practically in the classroom.
How can active methodologies enhance this process?
Active methodologies transform the learning process of the English language, making it more interactive, practical, and relevant for students. By engaging actively, students not only acquire knowledge but also develop communication, critical thinking, and collaboration skills, which are essential for proficiency in a second language. These approaches also increase motivation and engagement, crucial elements for effective learning. These teaching methods involve students in a more direct and participatory way in the learning process. They are effective because they promote active and contextualized language practice, and most importantly, they are not restricted to the moment the students are in class with the teacher or even to the school premises; it allows students to expand their exposure to the language and develop autonomy in the learning process.
Why and how is a partnership with a Bilingual Program effective in this process?
Most management teams in regular schools lack proficiency in English, which limits their ability to validate the skills of their English-speaking staff and assess the training and support needs of these specialists. By establishing this partnership, the team responsible for supporting the institution will carry out linguistic validation for both current English staff and any new hires necessary to initiate the implementation steps.
The process of implementing the Bilingual Program is conducted through technical and in-depth training, tailored to the school team’s needs. These actions are scheduled through an Annual Plan created collaboratively between the school and the pedagogical team, ensuring that the school community has the methodological and technical knowledge needed to make the changes effective in the classroom. Throughout the year, classes are observed to understand specific classroom contexts and identify the most pressing needs at each school level. This diagnostic process feeds the framework used in the training sessions.
In short, partnering with a Bilingual Program is essential to ensure the school team has the expertise necessary not only to validate and enhance linguistic skills but also to create a supportive environment for developing additional language skills. By joining forces with bilingual specialists, the school invests in the continuous development of its staff and the quality of the education provided. With strategic planning and coordinated actions, a partnership with a Bilingual Program proves to be a key step toward educational excellence and the improvement of pedagogical practices in a multicultural and globalized environment.
The UDP Bilingual Program, from SM Educação Brasil, beyond all the benefits listed previously, it combines different solutions, and it is offered from Kindergarten to Secondary School, from 3-year-old-kids to 9th graders. It consists of an exclusive coursebook to the program, digital environment, digital library with over 3 thousand books, TOEFL certification for 5th and 9th grades and mobile app.
The content of the UDP Bilingual Program is organized into lessons, catering for three, four, or five lessons per week. The content plan for each level of the program lays out the ideal sequence of work with the components but also allows time for lessons developed by the teacher or other school activities.
