The Secret to Learning a Language: How Harry Potter Is Teaching Me Portuguese
I’m currently teaching English in Brazil and learning Portuguese. Since I’m both learning a language and teaching one, I find myself thinking a lot about how we learn languages.
Many of us may know someone who is a polyglot — someone who can speak a number of languages fluently. I always wondered: what’s their secret?
I’ve had a realization recently: our inner geek is the secret.
Let me explain.
Brazilian Gamers Speak English
My realization started with an observation that I made early in my time in Brazil: the Brazilians I knew that spoke the best English either lived abroad or were gamers.
Why gamers? One of my friends broke it down for me.
It used to be the case that video games were only available in English. You just couldn’t get them in Portuguese. If you wanted to game in Brazil, you had to do it in English.
As a language teacher, I’m interested in understanding what factors are involved in learning languages. I think there are a few factors we can draw out from the gamers-as-English-masters phenomenon.
The first is about exposure. The second is about focus and processing. The third is…
